UK Court Verdict: Craig Wright Not the Bitcoin Creator, Satoshi Nakamoto

A UK court has ruled against Craig Wright, affirming he is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic founder of Bitcoin. This decision ended a significant lawsuit brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance.

UK Court Rules Craig Wright Is Not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto

Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the Bitcoin network, according to a ruling by Judge James Mellor in the United Kingdom on March 14, reported BitMEX Research.

Closing arguments began in London on March 12 in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) lawsuit against Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has claimed to be Nakamoto since 2016.

COPA sought injunctive relief to prevent Wright from falsely claiming to be Nakamoto. Wright has been accused of massive document forgery supporting his claim to be the pseudonymous Bitcoin founder. According to COPA’s closing submission:

“Dr. Wright has been shown to have lied on an extraordinary scale. […] He has invented an entire biographical history, producing one tranche after another of forged documents to support it.”

The trial started on February 5. Coin Telegraph reported that Wright offered to settle the case outside of court on January 24, but COPA declined.

COPA and Leading Tech Giants Unite to Combat Legal Threats Against Bitcoin Innovation

COPA was founded in 2020 "to encourage the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation." The organization's 33 members include Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap, and Worldcoin.

In 2023, the Wrights sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a group of companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for copyright violations involving the Bitcoin white paper, file format, and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain.

In response to the lawsuit, the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund said:

“For years, prominent contributors to the Bitcoin community have been the subject of abusive lawsuits […] These lawsuits are frivolous but effective. Many developers have decided it’s not worth the time, stress, money, and legal risk to continue working on Bitcoin.”

Court Blocks Wright's Attempts to Copyright Bitcoin White Paper and Code

In 2019, Wright registered copyright in the United States for the Bitcoin white paper and its code.

The Bitcoin white paper is now available under an MIT open-source license, which allows anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose. A court injunction would prevent Wright from pursuing additional copyright claims on it.

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