A UK court has ruled that Dr. Craig Wright is not the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright has claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin and has asserted copyright over the Bitcoin whitepaper. However, Judge James Mellor has dismissed these claims.
Wright’s claims have been met with skepticism from the cryptocurrency community, and he has been involved in a legal battle with the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and a group of Bitcoin Core developers since 2021. COPA, which is backed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has accused Wright of fraud and extortion. The trial, which concluded this week, began in a UK courtroom on February 5.
In his ruling, Judge Mellor stated: “I will make certain declarations which I am satisfied are useful and are necessary to do justice between the parties. First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011. Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin System. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.”
Prior to the trial, Wright offered to settle the intellectual property case with COPA, but the organization publicly rejected the proposal.
