A federal appeals court in the US has given song-swap service Napster the green light to resume business over the Internet.
It overruled a lower court judge who had demanded more assurances on copyright protection.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Napster, which has been voluntarily offline since the beginning of the month, was allowed to resume operations pending further order of the court.
The decision by the court's three-judge panel overruled an earlier ruling by federal Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who on July 11th instructed Napster to stay offline until it could show it had done everything it could to make its new song-filtering system 100 per cent effective.
Napster officials expressed pleasure with the appeals court decision, but did not to say if the company would immediately resume trading music.
"We're pleased that the US Court of Appeals granted our request for a stay", Mr Jonathan Schwartz, Napster's general counsel, said in a statement."We're studying the implications of the decision. We continue to push ahead with the launch of our new membership service later this summer."
Napster has been under legal attack for more than a year by the recording industry, which has accused it of allowingmusic piracy over the Internet and running roughshod over copyright law.
To try and stay in business, Napster has vowed to relaunch itself as a subscription service, charging members for monitored access to copyright-protected material.