Craig Wright Allowed to Defend the Copyright of Bitcoin (BTC)
Date: 2023-07-25 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BLOCKCHAIN, IN WORLD
A British court has upheld an appeal that gave Australian engineer Craig Wright the right to claim the copyright to bitcoin (BTC).
The judges allowed Wright to argue that the bitcoin file format is quite clearly defined. So he can get copyright protection under British law. This is stated in the statement of the Legal Defense Fund.
However, whether Wright really created bitcoin and hid under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the court will determine during the proceedings in January 2024.
"Copyright issues will be resolved in a full trial, but only if Dr. Wright demonstrates that he is Satoshi Nakamoto," the statement said.
At the same time, Wright's lawyers said that he was "satisfied" with the outcome of the case, and recognized the high stakes in the case.
Wright's Trial
Wright, who has claimed to have invented bitcoin since 2016, has filed a lawsuit against 13 BTC developers and several crypto companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block. In the document, he claimed that they violate his copyright on the first cryptocurrency.
However, in February, Wright lost a copyright case . The court considered his arguments insufficient to show how the BTC file format was first recorded. He later appealed the court's decision, and it was accepted.
Wright's history of conflicts over BTC rights
The recent trial is the latest in a series of Wright's BTC claims. In February 2021, he sued crypto developers, demanding the return of about 99,100 bitcoins to him. In his opinion, the attackers received encryption keys to the file in which contained private keys to the wallet with stolen BTC.
Wright also accused Apple of copyright infringement after the macOS operating system discovered a PDF file of the original BTC whitepaper. In addition, he claimed the rights to 1.1 million coins, which are stored in several wallets.
