In a landmark ruling on April 17, a Swedish court handed down a guilty verdict in the widely followed copyright-infringement trial of the four founders of The Pirate Bay, a notorious hub for the peer-to-peer sharing of video games, software, music, movies and other copyrighted files. In this Analysis, Wendy Freedman of LeClair Ryan examines the Swedish ruling and discusses IP enforcement actions and the effects of piracy. She writes:
The court sentenced the four young men -- Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom -- to a year in jail for helping users commit copyright violations --by providing a Web site with ... sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and through the tracker linked to the Web site.
It also ordered them to pay damages of 30 million kroner ($3.6 million U.S.) to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures. Speaking to reporters after the trial, Judge Tomas Norstrom noted the court had taken into account the --commercially driven nature of The Pirate Bay.
Sweden has come under increasing pressure from the United States to take intellectual property violations more seriously. Indeed, many of today's most popular file-sharing sites -- key among them, The Pirate Bay, Kazaa and the peer-to-peer telephony giant Skype -- were established in the country. Fortunately, that pressure appears to be paying dividends.
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At the international level, all member states, including Sweden, have been bound by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (the "TRIPS Agreement"), concluded in the framework of the World Trade Organization and approved by Council Decision 94/800/EC.
The TRIPS Agreement contains, in particular, provisions on criminal matters, which are common standards applicable at the international level.
But, as noted by the member states to the TRIPS Agreement, the disparities between member states are still too great, and they do not permit effective combating of intellectual property offenses. This has caused a loss of confidence in the internal market in business circles, with a consequent reduction in investment in innovation and creation.