Last month the Swedish Court of Appeal ruled that two of the Pirate Bay's oldest domains will be forfeited to the Swedish state. However, Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij is dissatisfied with the result and has now filed a further appeal. Sweden's Supreme Court must now decide whether to take the case.

In 2013, anti-piracy prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion targeting two of The Pirate Bay’s oldest domains, ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se.

Ingblad filed a complaint against Punkt SE (IIS), the organization responsible for Sweden’s top-level .SE domain, arguing that since The Pirate Bay is an illegal site the domains are tools used to infringe copyright. On this basis they should be suspended, Ingblad said.

The case was heard in April 2015 and a month later the Stockholm District Court ruled that The Pirate Bay should forfeit both ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se.

The case went to the Court of Appeal and last month the ruling of the District Court was upheld.

But as is so often the case with Pirate Bay legal action, the show isn’t over yet. Following the ruling, site co-founder Fredrik Neij indicated he would take an appeal to the Supreme Court. That has now been filed.

“Fredrik Neij moves that the Supreme Court, by the modification and elimination of the District Court and Court of Appeal’s decision, should reject the prosecutor’s request for Fredrik Neij’s forfeiture to the right of the domain names piratebay.se and thepiratebay.se,” Neij’s lawyer Jonas Nilsson writes in a translation sent to TF.

The situation is somewhat complex. In 2012, Neij transferred the domains to a person named Supavadee Trakunroek. However, the Court of Appeal found that transaction to be mere ‘paperwork’ and that in real terms Neij had retained control of the domains.

With that in mind the question remained – should the domains be ‘seized’ from Neij or from IIS, the organization responsible for Sweden’s top-level .SE domain?

The Court found that domain names should be considered a type of intellectual property, property that is owned by the person or organization that purchased the domain. Therefore, in this case IIS is not the owner of the Pirate Bay domains, Neij is.

It is this aspect of the ruling that Fredrik Neij is now appealing to the Supreme Court.

“Fredrik Neij argues that the District Court and the Court of Appeal wrongly concluded that a domain name is a type of intellectual property that can be confiscated in accordance with copyright law,” his appeal reads.

With the appeal now filed it is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether to take the case. Domains used for illegal activity have been seized in Sweden before, but none have been fought as actively as this one.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is operating from the .org domain it began with, all those years ago.