Craig Wright wins default judgment, Bitcoin.org must remove Bitcoin whitepaper

Self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin SV advocate Craig Wright have won a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement on bitcoin.org for hosting the official Bitcoin report.

By default, Wright won after the site’s pseudonymous owner, Cøbra, decided not to offer protection.

Bitcoin.org must now remove the official report and display a notice of the verdict and set aside at least £ 35,000 ($ 48,600) to cover Wright’s legal fees. Cøbra responded to the verdict on Twitter:

I don’t think you could get a better indication of * why * Bitcoin is needed than what happened today.

Rules enforced by cryptography are far superior to those based on the fact that anyone can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court.

– Cbra (@CobraBitcoin) June 28, 2021

Wright’s legal representative, Onter LLP, hailed the win as “an important development in Dr. Wright’s quest to obtain legal rationale for his copyright in Dr. Mir’s white papers.”

“Dr. Wright doesn’t want to restrict access to his whitepaper, ”wrote Simon Cohen, Senior Associate at Onter. “However, he does not believe that it should be used by proponents and developers of alternative assets such as Bitcoin Core to promote or otherwise misrepresent these assets as Bitcoin, as they do not support his vision of Bitcoin as outlined in his or match it with white paper. “

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In January, Wright sent letters to bitcoin.org, bitcoin.com, and bitcoincore.org asking them to remove copies of the Bitcoin whitepaper from their websites, claiming they were violating their intellectual property rights.

In April, Wright received permission to email Cøbra outside of the UK jurisdiction, with bitcoin.org operator having 22 days to respond as of April 26.

Last month, Cøbra tweeted that they missed the deadline. In response to suspicions that they might have missed the deadline for anonymity, Cobra responded speak: “Didn’t. I didn’t show up because defending yourself against nonsense is a waste of time.”