A high court in the United Kingdom has ruled that a copyright owner does not have the right to claim profits from copyright infringement.

"A copyright owner does not have a proprietary claim to the fruits of an infringement of copyright. I shall not, therefore, grant proprietary injunctions," wrote judge Guy Newey of the England and Wales High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, in a ruling published on Tuesday.

For years, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been after Newzbin2, the successor to Newzbin—a site that indexed binaries posted to Usenet. Newzbin was closed down late last year.

The original site was slammed by the UK legal system back in 2010 and was found liable for copyright infringement "because it has authorized the copying of the claimants' files; has procured and engaged with its premium members in a common design to copy the claimants' files; and has communicated the claimants' files to the public."

Newzbin’s founder David Harris was targeted as well, and his bank accounts were frozen. But the MPAA also wanted a proprietary injunction, which would allow it to seize control of his property—real estate, cars, and other assets—on the logic that film studios should get any profits from copyright infringement.

The judge did not agree with this argument, noting (in response to a coin thief analogy made by Harris' counsel) that “a copyright infringer is more akin to a trespasser rather than to the thief of the coins."

“Suppose, say, that a market trader sells infringing DVDs, among other goods, from a stall he has set up on someone else's land without consent,” Guy Newey added. “The owner of the land could not, as I see it, make any proprietary claim to the proceeds of the trading or even the profit from it. There is no evident reason why the owner of the copyright in the DVDs should be in a better position in this respect.”

The MPAA told IDG News Service that it would appeal the decision.