The High Court in London declared that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, according to a ruling on Thursday.
The ruling came from Judge James Mellor after the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) initiated a legal battle against Wright to prevent him from suing Bitcoin developers under the claim that he was the creator of digital currency.
COPA, a consortium that includes Jack Dorsey’s Block, among others, filed the lawsuit to safeguard the open-source nature of Bitcoin. This move came in response to Wright’s long-standing assertion that he authored the 2008 Bitcoin white paper, a claim that has been met with widespread skepticism within the cryptocurrency community.
Trial Details and Accusations
During the trial, which spanned six weeks, Wright faced accusations of fabricating evidence to support his claim. COPA’s legal representative, Jonathan Hough, criticized Wright’s actions as constituting “forgery on an industrial scale” and labeled his claim as “an elaborate false narrative.” Despite Wright’s denial of these accusations, the evidence presented led Judge Mellor to conclude that Wright is not the creator of Bitcoin.
COPA’s case also revealed Wright’s alleged misuse of legal threats based on his claim, aiming to stop him from asserting his identity as Nakamoto. This includes Craig Wright’s history of litigation against developers and others in the crypto space, accusing them of infringing on his intellectual property rights.
The court’s decision is expected to end Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto, providing clarity on a matter that has been a subject of intense debate for years.
The MIT open-source license has been applied to the Bitcoin white paper, which means that anyone can use and modify the code for their own purposes. Additionally, a court injunction has been put in place to prevent Wright from making any further copyright claims on the paper.
