THE IMPORTANCE OF THE JUDGEMENT AGAINST CRAIG WRIGHT AND WHY IT MATTERS FOR THE CRYPTO INDUSTRY Authored by: Konstantinos Adamos, Group Legal Counsel (Crypto) and Non-Executive Director RT Digital Securities Cyprus, Revolut There has been considerable media attention and public interest concerning the recent High Court judgement against Craig Wright in a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (“COPA”), a non-profit organisation whose members include prominent cryptoassets exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken as well as other interested parties. Dr. Wright is an Australian computer scientist who for several years has been claiming to be the man behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto; the creator of Bitcoin. Although the full written judgement will follow at a later date, the judge declared that on the basis of the evidence presented to him, which he described as “overwhelming”, Dr. Wright is neither Satoshi Nakamoto nor the creator of Bitcoin. Why is this important? The restoration of the truth is of course important in its own right. However, the ruling also has important practical implications, in particular in relation to the passing-off claims Wright has brought against cryptoassets exchanges Coinbase and Kraken. In those claims Wright is seeking no less than £500 billion in damages - alleging that the exchanges have misled investors by marketing and selling their own cryptocurrencies using the Bitcoin brand. Wright claims that the Bitcoin ‘fork’ called Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (“BSV”) is the only real version of Bitcoin. While the most recent case did not consider Wright’s passing-off claims, it is virtually certain that the decision will adversely influence these claims, which are predicated on him being the creator of Bitcoin. Furthermore, it is likely that the decision will impact any future attempts Wright may pursue to assert intellectual property rights over Bitcoin.
The background Over the course of several years, in addition to his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto, Wright has been trying to assert that he has certain database rights over parts of the Bitcoin blockchain, copyrights over the Bitcoin File Format and over the Bitcoin White Paper. These claims were often pursued by means of litigation. In a separate case argued before the Court of Appeal in July 2023[1], Wright successfully sought to overturn a High Court ruling[2] that refused him permission to serve a claim form on defendants outside of the UK. A small but important procedural victory which allowed Wright to continue pursuing his claim. Wright’s underlying claim in that case concerned an alleged infringement of his copyright over the Bitcoin File Format (i.e. the methodology in which new blocks of transactions are added to the Bitcoin file). Copyright that Wright claimed to have by virtue of the fact that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright also objected to two airdrops which he claimed significantly changed the Bitcoin system without his consent. Such claims not only run contrary to the fact that Bitcoin is made available as an open source code but also are against the fundamental principles of Bitcoin as a permissionless network where no one person has the right or the ability to control the network.
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