Crypto Open Patent Alliance v BTC CoreCraig Steven Wright
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Judge | Mr Justice Mellor |
| Judgment Date | 20 May 2024 |
| Neutral Citation | [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch) |
| Docket Number | Claim Nos. IL-2021-000019 |
[2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch)
Mr. Justice Mellor
Claim Nos. IL-2021-000019
IL-2022-000069
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LIST (ChD)
The Rolls Building
7 Rolls Buildings
Fetter Lane
London EC4A 1NL
Jonathan Hough KC, Jonathan Moss (instructed by Bird & Bird LLP) and TRISTAN SHERLIKER (of Bird & Bird LLP) appeared for COPA.
Lord Grabiner KC, Craig Orr KC, Mehdi Baiou, Timothy Goldfarb and Richard Greenberg (instructed by Shoosmiths LLP) appeared for Dr Wright.
Alex Gunning KC and Beth Collett (instructed by Macfarlanes LLP) appeared for the Developers in the BTC Core Claim (Defendants 2–12, 14 & 15).
Terence Bergin KC and Jack Castle (instructed by Harcus Parker LLP) made brief submissions on behalf of the Claimants in the BTC Core Claim.
Hearing Dates: 5 th–9 th, 12 th–16 th, 19 th–23 rd, 26 th–29 th February, 12 th–14 th March 2024
APPROVED JUDGMENT
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
This judgment was handed down remotely by circulation to the parties' representatives by email. It will also be released for publication on the National Archives and other websites. The date and time for hand-down is deemed to be Monday 20 th May 2024 at 10.30am.
THE HON Mr Justice Mellor
| SUMMARY | 8 |
| THE STRUCTURE OF THIS JUDGMENT | 12 |
| References | 13 |
| AN UNCONTROVERSIAL CHRONOLOGY | 13 |
| A short history of Satoshi's involvement in Bitcoin | 13 |
| Uncontested aspects of Dr Wright's background and activities in Australia | 14 |
| Dr Wright's activities following his move to the UK | 17 |
| THIS ACTION | 20 |
| Case management of the docketed actions | 22 |
| Service of Madden1, and further applications | 23 |
| Dr Wright's Chain of Custody information | 24 |
| Further Disclosure and the Mock Trial | 24 |
| The October application to plead further forgeries | 25 |
| Developments in the expert evidence | 26 |
| The Pre-Trial Review, the ‘Additional Documents’ & the application to adjourn | 26 |
| Disclosure | 29 |
| THE IDENTITY ISSUE | 30 |
| Applicable Legal Principles | 31 |
| Burden and Standard of Proof | 31 |
| Pleading and Proof of Fraud | 32 |
| Evidence – Recollections of Witnesses and Documentary Evidence | 33 |
| Points on Expert Evidence | 35 |
| The Preparation of Expert Evidence | 35 |
| Drawing of Inferences (including from absence of witnesses) | 36 |
| Evidence on Character and Credibility | 36 |
| Hearsay Evidence – Admissibility and Weight | 37 |
| Admissibility of Public Reports and of Judgments in Other Proceedings | 37 |
| The expert evidence on Autism Spectrum Disorder | 38 |
| THE EVIDENCE OF FACT | 38 |
| Dr Wright's witnesses of fact | 38 |
| Dr Wright | 38 |
| The Tyche emails | 41 |
| NAB Credit Card | 42 |
| The nCrypt Emails | 43 |
| The use of Aspose | 44 |
| The Papa Neema emails | 44 |
| The Timecoin paper attached to one of the Papa Neema emails | 45 |
| My conclusion on Dr Wright's general credibility | 46 |
| Mr Stefan Matthews | 47 |
| Mr Jenkins | 48 |
| Dr Wright's remaining witnesses of fact | 53 |
| Dr Wright's CEA Notice | 57 |
| Conclusions on Dr Wright's remaining witnesses of fact | 61 |
| COPA'S EVIDENCE OF FACT | 61 |
| COPA's witnesses of fact who were cross-examined | 61 |
| COPA's witnesses who were not cross-examined | 65 |
| COPA's CEA Notice | 68 |
| Evidence of Fact from the Developers | 69 |
| THE EXPERT EVIDENCE | 70 |
| The expert evidence on cryptocurrency matters | 70 |
| Mr ZeMing Gao | 71 |
| The expert evidence on forensic document analysis | 73 |
| The experts on LaTeX | 74 |
| TECHNICAL BACKGROUND | 75 |
| Hash Functions | 75 |
| Digital Signatures | 76 |
| The ‘control’ copies of the Bitcoin White Paper | 77 |
| Transacting in Bitcoin | 77 |
| Transaction Ordering | 78 |
| Blockchain Forks | 79 |
| Storage and Use of Bitcoin | 79 |
| Security of Digital Signatures | 79 |
| Public keys Associated with Satoshi | 80 |
| COPA's ALLEGATIONS OF FORGERY | 81 |
| General points made by Dr Wright in response to the allegations of forgery | 82 |
| A. The forgery allegations concerned with Dr Wright's original disclosure | 82 |
| No time capsule documents in Dr Wright's original disclosure | 84 |
| Alleged problems with Mr Madden's reliability as an expert witness | 86 |
| Common features of Dr Wright's explanations for the forged documents | 95 |
| B. The Forgery Allegations in relation to the Additional Documents | 99 |
| Mr Christen Ager-Hanssen | 101 |
| Dr Wright's various allegations that forged documents were planted | 101 |
| C. The Ontier Email Forgery Allegation | 104 |
| D. The LaTeX documents | 104 |
| An outline of Dr Wright's position in closing | 104 |
| E. The development of the case based on the LaTeX files | 106 |
| The ‘before’ | 106 |
| The ‘tease’ | 108 |
| The ‘reveal’ | 109 |
| i. Dr Wright's Overleaf account | 110 |
| ii. The efforts made to resist providing metadata | 112 |
| iii Summary | 116 |
| F. The evidence of forgery of the LaTeX Bitcoin White Paper | 120 |
| a. The animations | 120 |
| b. Metadata command | 122 |
| c. Text formatting | 126 |
| d. The images | 130 |
| i. Image 4 | 131 |
| ii. Dr Wright's written evidence about the images | 133 |
| iii. Aspose | 136 |
| e. Impossibility | 142 |
| i. fontspec | 143 |
| ii. hidelinks | 143 |
| iii. unicode-math | 143 |
| iv. \AddToShipoutPictureBG* | 144 |
| v. The arrows.meta library | 144 |
| vi. luacode | 144 |
| f. Summary | 145 |
| G. The true position as regards the Bitcoin White Paper | 145 |
| THE SECOND CHRONOLOGICAL RUN | 146 |
| A. Skills, Knowledge and Experience | 147 |
| Coding experience in C++ | 148 |
| Academic qualifications | 149 |
| COPA's case as to Dr Wright's skills, knowledge and experience | 151 |
| B. Investment in the evolution of digital cash systems | 151 |
| Project Blacknet | 152 |
| C. Precursor work and discussions | 153 |
| Lasseter's and Vodafone | 154 |
| BDO | 154 |
| D. Drafting, sharing and releasing the Bitcoin White Paper | 155 |
| Dr Wright's evidence on drafting the Bitcoin White Paper | 157 |
| E. The writing of the Bitcoin Source Code (in C++) | 160 |
| Dr Wright's evidence about writing the Bitcoin Source Code | 160 |
| The Developers cast doubt on Dr Wright's C++ coding proficiency | 162 |
| Unsigned integer | 163 |
| CheckBlock | 164 |
| Proof-of-Work | 167 |
| Wei Dai | 168 |
| Dr Adam Back | 174 |
| F. Launch of Bitcoin | 177 |
| Dr Wright's evidence on launching the Bitcoin system | 177 |
| G. Further circumstantial evidence post-dating the White Paper | 178 |
| Dr Wright's 69 computers | 179 |
| i. Problem 1: inconsistency with the known difficulty | 180 |
| ii. Problem 2: inconsistency with known electricity consumption | 181 |
| opcodes | 182 |
| i. Script size | 182 |
| ii. OP_2MUL | 183 |
| The anachronisms | 184 |
| i. CheckBlockHeader | 184 |
| ii. BTC Core | 187 |
| iii. UTXO | 188 |
| iv. Bootstrapping | 190 |
| v. Summary | 192 |
| Satoshi's Bitcoin payments | 193 |
| The PGP key | 194 |
| i. The date of creation of the key: not 2011 | 195 |
| ii. The nature of the key: not “ person or persons unknown” | 196 |
| Dr Wright's first public reference to Bitcoin | 197 |
| Dr Wright's evidence as to his leaving the Satoshi persona | 199 |
| The Investigations by the Australian Tax Office and the ATO Decisions | 200 |
| The Tulip Trust | 203 |
| Conclusion under this heading | 205 |
| H. Patent Research and Development | 206 |
| I. The private proof sessions | 207 |
| Summary | 207 |
| The position on the pleadings | 207 |
| The facts | 209 |
| Conclusions on the private signing sessions | 210 |
| The Signing Sessions with Mr Matonis and the Journalists | 211 |
| The Signing Session with Mr Andresen | 212 |
| J. The public proof session | 215 |
| The facts | 215 |
| My findings in relation to the Sartre blog post | 218 |
| Dr Wright's excuse for not having the private keys now | 219 |
| The July 2016 Dinner with Mr Mike Hearn | 220 |
| Analysis | 223 |
| The other litigation involving Dr Wright as Satoshi | 225 |
| OVERALL CONCLUSIONS | 225 |
| DECLARATORY RELIEF | 228 |
| FURTHER RELIEF | 230 |
SUMMARY
Dr Craig Steven Wright (‘Dr Wright’) claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto i.e. he claims to be the person who adopted that pseudonym, who wrote and published the first version of the Bitcoin White Paper on 31 October 2008, who wrote and released the first version of the Bitcoin Source Code and who created the Bitcoin system. Dr Wright also claims to be a person with a unique intellect, with numerous degrees and PhDs in a wide range of subjects, the unique combination of which led him (so it is said) to devise the Bitcoin system.
Thus, Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly...
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