Following legal action against the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain, in May a Swedish court ordered two Pirate Bay domains to be seized by the state. However, in a blow to the prosecutor the court stopped short of a finding the domain registry liable. The case will now go to the Court of Appeal.

In 2013, famous anti-piracy prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion targeting ThePirateBay.se (the site’s main domain) and PirateBay.se (a lesser used alternative).

Rather than take on the site itself, Ingblad filed a complaint against Punkt SE (IIS), the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain.

Ingbland argued that since The Pirate Bay is an illegal operation, the site’s domains are tools used to infringe copyright. The prosecutor said that as the supplier and controller of those domains, IIS should be held liable for the copyright infringements associated with them.

Not surprisingly, IIS held the position that a registry should not be held liable for infringement and that any decision on the fate of a domain should be decided by the courts. As such, IIS flat-out refused to suspend Pirate Bay’s domains.

The case was finally heard this April and in May the Stockholm District Court ruled that The Pirate Bay should forfeit its Sweden-based domains, ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se. However, when considering his long-term aspirations beyond the Pirate Bay, the victory for the prosecutor lacked suitable punch.

All along, IIS said it understood the nature of The Pirate Bay and was prepared to take action against the site’s domains, if ordered to do so by a court. It’s a position taken by many organizations and companies, ISPs in particular, when asked to take anti-piracy actions in the absence of legal precedent.

Due to its refusal to terminate the Pirate Bay’s domains, the Stockholm Court found that IIS did indeed contribute to the copyright infringements of the site. However, as now explained by IIS counsel Elisabeth Ekstrand, it also noted the special circumstances of the case.

“[Unlike] an ISP that provides a service for financial gain, IIS has acted from a different point of view,” Ekstrand says.

“IIS has publicly announced and motivated its approach to the prosecutor’s motion, that is to say that we have no obligation to act but rather an obligation not to act without a direct order (for example, from a law enforcement agency).

“The statement is based on the view that the assignment of managing an important function in society does not include judging over whether an individual case can be considered illegal or not.”

Essentially, IIS believes that it wasn’t its responsibility to decide whether a domain should or should not be closed down and that requesting an official ruling from the court was the proper way of going about things. Ultimately the court agreed that the position taken by IIS was both legitimate and justified.

This meant that although The Pirate Bay’s domains were ordered to be seized, the case against IIS was rejected, with the District Court dismissing the prosecution’s case and awarding the registry close to $40,000 (SEK 332,000) in costs.

It’s now clear that the prosecution is unhappy with the outcome and will take the case to trial at the Court of Appeal. TorrentFreak has contacted Fredrik Ingblad in an effort to find out his precise grounds for appeal and will update this article when those arrive.

In the meantime, however, it seems likely that the prospect of heading to court each and every time the government wants to seize a ‘pirate’ domain is proving too much of a headache.

As it stands today, IIS is considered to be acting reasonably when it refuses to suspend a domain without an explicit instruction from a court or the police, for example. And having gone down that road with The Pirate Bay once before (and being quite vocal while doing so), all the signs point to the registry applying similar standards in future.

“A decision in the Court of Appeals trumps a decision in the District Court, which can mean that we, or the prosecution depending on who ‘wins’, will get a stronger support for their way of looking at it,” Ekstrand concludes.

No date has yet been set for the trial.