This is interesting.  The music industry body IFPI wants a seemingly pro Music Industry judge off the appeal panel.

It appears that Fredrik Niemelä holds stock in Spotify – a music streaming application.  In addition, he is a well-regarded programmer who co-owns (with the original developer of uTorrent) a patent related to streaming technology.

According to an automated translation of the court ruling (with minor edits to improve clarity), "The Court of Appeal finds the reasons for the decision, including that it appeared that the man is employed as a product developer and holds stock options in Spotify AB.  The court of appeals further notes that the activities of Spotify AB - ie. provision of services which provide legally available copyright material on the Internet - is obviously of some interest to the outcome of the case.  These facts are according to the Court of Appeal such that they together constitute grounds for questioning his impartiality in the mentioned case.  Therefore conflict of interest exists.  To mention the man is currently on maternity leave from his job has not affected the assessment.  Nor does the fact that the man himself did not consider the conflict of interest exists."

The ruling was unanimous and cannot be appealed.

However, there is strong speculation in the TorrentFreak report that the real reason for the removal request was that Niemelä was likely to be far more pro-Pirate Bay than IFPI would like, as he had a clear and deep understanding of exactly how BitTorrent actually worked.

The case is scheduled to be heard in November; there is currently no word on Niemelä's replacement on the Appeal panel.