Shawn Fanning started the service as a 19-year-old

But Ms Patel told Napster it needed to block 100% of unauthorised copyright songs or stay offline indefinitely.

Since the ruling Napster has been focusing on creating a paid online music service.

Since 1999, recording companies have been seeking damages from Napster for allowing copyrighted songs by recording artists to be swapped by users who were able to swap and download recorded material for free.

Companies including AOL Time Warner, EMI and Bertelsmann allege such software was cheating them out of royalties.

Last month, Ms Patel handed Napster a small victory, giving the service time to gather evidence over the copyright infringement case.

Bertlesmann has since joined forces with Napster and hopes to relaunch the site legally later this year.

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Created by then 19-year-old student Shawn Fanning (Napster was his nickname at university), the service at one point swelled to more than 70 million users.

Napster counters that music labels deliberately misused their copyrights in order to dominate the relatively unchartered world of online music distribution.

It says they wanted to see Napster shut down purely so their own sites would face no other competition.

In an effort to join the mainstream, Napster began testing a paid, secure online music service in January.

It has yet to secure any licences from the major labels who sued it for copyright infringement.

Two legitimate services, Pressplay and MusicNet, backed by the big five companies have launched in recent months but have yet to make much of an impact on the market.

Listen.com launched its service called Rhapsody in early December but its content has been limited to music from independent labels.