Craig Wright wins High Court case over Bitcoin white paper

The High Court of London has ruled in Wright’s favour in the case against the owner of Bitcoin.org, who goes by the alias Cobra. This was reported by Ontier, the law firm.

According to the notice, on 28 June the judge ordered that the defendant must not infringe Wright’s copyright in the United Kingdom “by both providing the ability to download the white paper from Bitcoin.org and by any other means.”

Cobra must publish on its site a copy of the judgment within six months.

“The court also ordered an investigation to determine the damage caused by Wright’s copyright infringement in the UK, and to award Wright his legal costs,” the statement said.

The amount of the latter was £35 000 (about $48 600), Decrypt reports.

The hearing was held remotely. The defendant attended the hearing but declined to make any statements to preserve anonymity, and the court entered default judgment.

Happy to pay Craig his costs for the Bitcoin whitepaper case.

How does a BTC payment to the address associated with block #9 sound? https://t.co/dxMWIrnkGx

— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) June 28, 2021

“Happy to pay Craig his costs for the Bitcoin whitepaper case. How about paying in BTC to the address associated with block #9?”, — wrote Cobra.

In 2019 Wright secured copyright in the white paper and the Bitcoin source code. Later, the US Copyright Office clarified that it did not recognise him as the creator of the digital gold Satoshi Nakamoto.

Earlier in January 2021 Wright accused Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org of copyright infringement and demanded the remove the white paper. Cobra refused to take that step. Later he posted on Twitter that there were murder threats from someone, “associated with the Bitcoin SV community.”

With a similar demand, Ontier’s lawyers approached the payment company Square, on whose site a copy of the document is hosted. In February, the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) asked Wright to explain, on what basis he asserts copyright in the white paper.

In April the alliance filed a lawsuit against the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin. COPA representatives demanded that the defendant be recognised as having no involvement in writing the document.

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