A Swedish court ruled today that the judge overseeing The Pirate Bay trial earlier this year was not biased by belonging to various pro-copyright organizations. The unanimous decision (Swedish) means that there will be no retrial; the defendants must hope for a successful appeal instead.

Judge Tomas Norstr�m is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association, as are several of the lawyers who represented the recording and movie industries during the trial. He also sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, an advocacy group that pushes stricter copyright laws.

After receiving a verdict of a year in jail (each) and a shared 30 million kronor fine, The Pirate Bay defendants charged Norstr�m with bias and asked a court of appeal for a completely new trial with a different judge.

That appeal was overseen by Judge Anders Eka, who doesn't normally hear copyright-related cases but did so here in order to make the ruling appear as fair as possible.

The Stockholm District Court, of which Norstr�m is a member, defended its judge during the proceedings, telling Eka and two other judges that membership in such groups is necessary to keep up with developments in the field. Every field has its professional organizations, and the District Court argued that this was no different.

Eka didn't fully agree. In today's announcement, he made clear that the judge should have disclosed his memberships up front. His memberships also showed "a commitment to issues of intellectual property that to some extent can be said to be in the rightsholders' interests."

But Eka and the other judges concluded that simply endorsing the principles of copyright law was no grounds for disqualification in a trial; copyright was written into Swedish law, and judges can't be called "biased" simply because they support existing laws.

"The Court of Appeal has come to the conclusion that none of the circumstances set out, individually or taken together, means that there are legitimate doubts about the judge's impartiality in this case. There has not been any bias," concluded the court. The decision cannot be appealed.

The Pirate Bay defendants can still appeal the results of the first trial, but they won't receive a Jammie Thomas-Rasset style do-over.

Update: As a reader points out, defendant Peter Kolmisoppi Sunde has just tweeted: "The Pirate Bay will now file charges against Sweden for violation for Human Rights. More info later. (The bias-judge is himself biased...)"