A U.K. judge has ruled against self-declared inventor Craig Wright, concluding that the file structure of the Bitcoin blockchain cannot be protected by copyright.
Craig Steven Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman
Wright had argued he should be entitled to prevent the operation of Bitcoin and the system that branched from it, Bitcoin Cash, because they violated his intellectual property rights. Wright claims he developed the 2008 Bitcoin white paper under Satoshi Nakamoto’s pseudonym.
Wright’s lawsuit was filed against many Bitcoin-related defendants, including several branches of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Wright asserts that the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision blockchain, which he forked off of another Bitcoin, is genuine.
“I do not see any prospect of the law as currently stated and understood in the case law allowing copyright protection of subject matter which is not expressed or fixed anywhere,” Mellor said in a ruling for the High Court of England and Wales. “It remains the case that no relevant ‘work’ has been identified containing content which defines the structure of the Bitcoin File Format,” although Wright and the two Wright-associated investment companies making the claim had been given “ample opportunity” to do so, Mellor added.
Later judgments will address claims relating to copyright to the 2008 white paper, and whether Wright is the author, the judge stated. The U.K. Court of Appeal decided last week that the trial for a lawsuit brought by Wright’s Tulip Trading against 16 Bitcoin developers should take place in London.
Several witnesses provided forensic evidence in a court hearing in Oslo last year that documents provided by Wright purporting to support his claim to be Nakomoto have inconsistencies, such as fonts that weren’t readily available at the time.
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