James Delahunty
27 Apr 2009 14:23
The four men sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.6 million after being found guilty of assisting copyright infringement should be given a new trial because the Judge was biased, a court heard on Monday. The lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, one of the four founders of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker, said that Judge Tomas Norstrom's affiliation with groups for copyright protection should have disqualified him.
"Tomas Norstrom was biased during the trial ... Secondly, he neglected to inform the defendants and their lawyers of the facts that constituted the bias," defense lawyer Per Samuelson said in the document, obtained by Reuters. The court of appeal now must decide whether to send the case back to District Court.
Judge Norstrom is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright and a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. Peter Danowsky, A board member of The Swedish Association for Copyright, represented the film and music industries in the trial. Lundstrom's lawyer last week filed an appeal, asking the court of appeal to change the verdict and dismiss the prosecution and the claims for compensation.
He also said the court should turn to the European court of justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling.