Policy Observatory
Swedish Supreme Court confirms that domain names constitute property that can be seized by the state
Sat 13 Jan 2018, 11:00
In April 2015, prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad directed claims against Fredrik Neij (one of the creators of The Pirate Bay) in an effort to disrupt the operation of The Pirate Bay website in Sweden. Ingblad also filed a complaint against Punkt SE (IIS), the organisation responsible for Sweden’s .se top-level domain. Mr Ingblad argued that the domains ‘ThePirateBay.se’ and ‘PirateBay.se’ were used as “tools” to aid and abet copyright infringement and should therefore be seized by the Swedish state.
In December 2017 the Swedish Supreme Court confirmed that the two domains can indeed be seized by the state.