December 27, 2002
SWEDEN COURT OF APPEAL ORDERS A MAN TO PAY A FINE AND LEGAL COSTS TO SCIENTOLOGY CHURCH
The Svea Court of Appeal has fined a former Stockholm resident 50,000 SEK and awarded more than 67,750 SEK in legal costs to Religious Technology Center after it successfully protected the copyright to portions of the unpublished Scientology scriptures from unlawful distribution.
“This is a perfect Christmas present for our Church. This completes a long litigation process resulting in our scriptures being protected from Internet terrorists like the defendant in this case. We can now concentrate fully on providing religious services to our parishioners and on our many social and community programs,” said Stockholm Church spokesperson, Gullevi Algren.
The case started more than six years ago when Zenon Panoussis, then living in Stockholm, placed portions of unpublished Scientology Scripture—earlier stolen from the Church of Scientology in Copenhagen—in the Parliament in Stockholm and then claimed it was publicly available. But the Stockholm City Court disagreed and Panoussis was convicted of copyright infringement and was ordered to pay fines, attorney fees, and costs totalling 1,334,500 SEK. The Court found that the unpublished Scientology materials were kept confidential by the Church and were not publicly available. The decision was upheld by both the Svea Appeal Court and by the Supreme Court.
In this new judgment, the Appeal Court ordered Panoussis to pay to Religious Technology Center, a Scientology church located in the United States that brought the complaint, an additional 67,750 SEK for its legal costs, as well as another 50,000 SEK fine.
“We are extremely pleased with this result,” said Warren McShane, president of Religious Technology Center. “This is the final word on this infringement case and the court made it very clear that people like Panoussis cannot infringe people’s rights to their unpublished works. The Internet anarchists are not above the law.”
Religious Technology Center has worked with governments and Internet Service Providers around the world to ensure that copyright rights are protected, as well as free speech rights.
The Scientology religion was founded by author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard. It has grown from one church in 1954 to more than 3,000 churches, missions and groups in 154 countries. The Scientology religion has been established in Sweden since 1969 and received official recognition from the government in 2000.
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