Pirate Bay co-founder Svartholm arrested in Cambodia

Gottfrid Svartholm, who disappeared while facing a 1-year jail sentence and hefty fine in Sweden, is taken into custody in Phnom Penh.

Gottfrid Svartholm, on the far right, is shown with Pirate Bay cohorts Peter Sunde, on the far left, and Fredrik Neij. Carl Lundström is not pictured.

(Credit: Pontus Alexander/Fabian Landgren)

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm, who disappeared while facing a jail sentence and hefty fine in Sweden for aiding in copyright infringement, has been arrested in Cambodia, according to a report.

Svartholm was arrested on Thursday by Cambodian police in Phnom Penh, reportsTorrentFreak, which points in its story to a piece in Swedish-language newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

The reason for the arrest has not been officially announced by Swedish or Cambodian authorities, TorrentFreak says, but borrowing from the SvD report, it quotes Svartholm's lawyer, Ola Salomonsson, as saying, "As far as I understand it is because he is on an international wanted list." (See update below as well.) Salomonsson also said Svartholm could be sent back to Sweden eventually, though there's no extradition treaty between that country and Cambodia.

Svartholm, along with Pirate Bay cohorts Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom, wasfound guilty in 2009 of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site. The four men were each sentenced to a year in jail and were also ordered to collectively pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of American media giants. An appeal attempt by Sunde, Neij, and Lundstrom came to an end this past February when the Sweden Supreme Court refused to hear their case.

Svartholm failed to appear at the initial appeal hearing in 2010, presenting a medical certificate that said he was confined to a hospital in Cambodia, TorrentFreak notes. But he also failed to show at a subsequent hearing and has been missing ever since. In the meantime, his sentence and $1.1 million share of the fine were finalized in Sweden's courts.

Svartholm was due to begin serving his jail sentence in January.

Apple goes after Galaxy S3, Note in new court filing

Coming off its big victory in its patent suit against Samsung in a Northern California court, Apple has filed an amended complaint with the same court in a separate case -- adding the Galaxy S3 andGalaxy Note to the list of Samsung devices it says infringe its intellectual property.

As reported by Apple Insider, the filing was made earlier today and involves a complaint first made in February that charged 17 Samsung devices with violating utility patents owned by Apple.

In relation to that complaint -- again, it's separate from the headline-grabbing case that began in April 2011 and wound up last Friday with an overwhelming win for Apple -- the iPhone and iPad maker sought a sales ban on Samsung'sGalaxy Nexus smartphone. The San Jose, Calif., court where the complaint was filed granted the ban, but it has been temporarily lifted while it's on appeal before a court in Washington, D.C. Apple also sought a ban on the Galaxy S3back in June, but that effort was put on holdowing to a packed court schedule.

In the amended complaint filed today, Apple says "infringing Samsung products include the at least 21 new smartphones, media players, and tablets that Samsung has released beginning in August 2011 and continuing through August 2012" and it lists the Galaxy S3, the Galaxy S3 -- Verizon, and the Galaxy Note smartphones, as well as the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, among the other products.

Apple would no doubt like to put the kibosh on the Galaxy S3, which has enjoyed brisk sales and has, according to analysts, helped increase Samsung's lead over Apple in the two companies' smartphone sales competition. The Note seems to be doing OK too, if numbers released by Samsung are any indication.