Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Craig Steven Wright
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Paul Matthews |
| Judgment Date | 22 December 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 3440 (Ch) |
| Docket Number | Case No: IL-2021-000019 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
[2021] EWHC 3440 (Ch)
HHJ Paul Matthews
(sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Case No: IL-2021-000019
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LIST (ChD)
Royal Courts of Justice
Rolls Building, Fetter Lane,
London, EC4A 1NL
Jonathan Moss (instructed by Bird & Bird LLP) for the Claimant
Michael Hicks (instructed by ONTIER LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 10 December 2021
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.
Introduction
This is my judgment on two applications. The first is one by the defendant by notice dated 28 September 2021, for orders (i) to strike out parts of the claimant's Amended Particulars of Claim and (ii) to exclude certain evidence at the trial of the claim, as well as ancillary orders. The second application is one by the claimant by notice dated 26 November 2021 for an order permitting the claimant to amend the Amended Particulars of Claim and the consequential directions. For convenience I will generally refer hereafter simply to the “particulars of claim”. The defendant's application is supported by a witness statement of Simon Alexander Cohen, and the claimant's application is supported by a witness statement of Philip Nathan Sherrell. Each of those two deponents has made a further witness statement in effect responding to points made by the other.
The applications are made in the context of a claim for (amongst other things) a declaration that the defendant is not the author of, and is not the owner of the copyright in, a document which has been called the Bitcoin White Paper, published in October 2008 under the name (agreed to be a pseudonym) of Satoshi Nakamoto. It is widely believed, at least in the cryptocurrency world, that whoever is Satoshi Nakamoto is the real father of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency concept. The claimant is a U.S.-based non-profit mutual benefit corporation established in September 2020 under the laws of California. The amended particulars of claim say that it “was formed to encourage the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and to remove barriers to growth and innovation in the cryptocurrency space”. Over the years, a number of persons have been suggested to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Since about 2015, there have been reports that Satoshi Nakamoto was the defendant, an Australian resident in England and Wales. Since about 2016 the defendant has publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. This claim has been brought in order to test those assertions.
The claim form, with particulars of claim attached, was originally issued in April 2021 and amended (along with the particulars of claim) in September 2021 with the permission of the court. Requests for further information of the particulars of claim were made and responded to. The defence was originally filed and served in May 2021, and amended, refiled and re-served in September 2021. There has also been a request for further information of the defence, and again a response has been made. The original reply by the claimant was served and filed on 19 July 2021, and an amended reply was refiled and reserved on 11 October 2021.
The claim against the defendant
The claimant is seeking a declaration that the defendant is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. The claimant seeks to prove a negative by showing (if it can) that the defendant has had various opportunities, and made various attempts, to prove his claim to be the author but on each occasion has failed to do so. The particulars of claim recite that the suggestion that the defendant was Satoshi Nakamoto first appeared in WIRED magazine in December 2015 (paragraph 13), and was publicly accepted by the defendant in May 2016 (paragraph 14), but that, despite offering to provide “extraordinary proof” of his claims (paragraph 20), the defendant “has failed to provide any credible evidence that he is Satoshi” (paragraph 17).
The particulars plead four specific occasions on which the defendant is said to have provided documentary evidence that he is Satoshi, but which evidence (it is said) does not support his claim. These are referred to as the “Sartre message” (paragraphs 23 to 25), the “BlackNet Abstract” (paragraphs 26 to 27), the “12 March 2008 Kleiman email” (paragraphs 28–29), and the “SSRN Submission” (paragraphs 30 to 34). In the following paragraphs, I summarise these allegations sufficiently for present purposes. I emphasise that they are simply the claimant's allegations, and not facts found by this court.
The Sartre message
The claimant says that the first of these was presented to journalists in April 2016 and published in May 2016 to prove the defendant's claim to be Satoshi. According to paragraph 24 of the particulars of claim, it was
“a message, a hash of the message, and a signature of the hash in the form of the text of a speech by Jean-Paul Sartre (the “Sartre Message”). The signature was purported to correspond to a private key associated with Bitcoins mined in Block 9 of the Bitcoin blockchain (which are believed to be Bitcoins mined by Satoshi).”
As to this, the claimant says that the signature did not so correspond:
“However, the provided signature was that of a 2009- era Bitcoin transaction that was publicly available in the blockchain and not one that was contemporaneously generated with regard to the Sartre Message (or one that corresponded to the Sartre Message).” (Particulars of claim, paragraph 25.)
In his defence (paragraph 1), the defendant says that any allegation not admitted by him is required to be proved by the claimant. He then goes on to say, with regard to the Sartre message, that the claimant is confusing the interviews carried out in April 2016 with a posting on 2 May 2016 (paragraph 36). Subsequently, the defendant admits that the example of 2 May 2016 posting related to a publicly available signature rather than to a private one. As a result of this, in its reply, paragraph 20, the claimant says that the defendant has effectively not pleaded to the allegations relating to the Sartre message. Given what the defendant says in paragraph 1 of his defence, there is an issue between the parties on this point.
At the hearing before me, Mr Hicks for the defendant said that this was not a question that turned on possible forgery. This was simply a question of what were the technical reasons why (in the claimant's view) the document did not show what the defendant said it showed. I have some difficulty in accepting this. If the provided signature was one which was publicly available in the blockchain, rather than one which corresponded to the private key associated with block nine of the Bitcoin blockchain, then it could not have been provided as a proof that the defendant was Satoshi (which was what was put forward) but could only be a forgery of such a signature. Whather it was put forward as a proof of being Satoshi Nakamoto is a matter for trial. So, forgery is in issue.
The BlackNet Abstract
The “BlackNet Abstract” was published by the defendant in February 2019, who asserted it to be an early iteration of the Bitcoin White Paper, written in 2001 and submitted to the Australian government (particulars of claim, paragraph 26). The abstract is copied from the abstract of the Bitcoin White Paper. The Bitcoin White Paper was, as I have said, published in October 2008. An earlier draft, from August 2008, was corrected before the publication of the final version in October. Yet the “BlackNet Abstract” contains the corrections made between August and October 2008, and therefore cannot predate either the draft Bitcoin White Paper or the Bitcoin White Paper itself (particulars of claim, paragraph 27).
The defendant says that the early submissions to the Australian government did not contain the abstract of the Bitcoin White Paper, but the later ones did so (defence, paragraph 45). So, again, the defendant argued that the question here was not forgery or not, but whether the publication of the abstract in 2019 was a statement that the defendant had the 2001 document, rather than something different (defence, paragraph 46). But what was being asserted by the publication in 2019 is a question for the trial. Forgery is again in issue.
The Kleiman email of 12 March 2008
In US legal proceedings to which I refer further below (the “Kleiman Litigation”), allegations were made against the defendant that, using forged documents, he stole Bitcoin and related intellectual property from a company called W&K Info Defense, LLC after the death of its founder, David Kleiman. In those proceedings, the defendant said he had sent an email to Mr Kleiman on 12 March 2008, which supported his claim to have originated the idea of Bitcoin:
“——— Original Message ——-
From: Craig S Wright [ mailto:craig.wright@information-defense.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 12 March 2008 6:37 PM
To: dave kleiman
Subject: FW: Defamation and the difficulties of law on the Internet.
I need your help editing a paper I am going to release later this year. I have been working on a new form of electronic money. Bit cash, Bitcoin…
You are always there for me Dave. I want you to be a part of it all.
I cannot release it as me. GMX, vistomail and Tor. I need your help and I need a version of me to make this work that is better than me.
Craig”.
However, the particulars in this case (paragraph 29) go on to allege that the domain used by the sender of the email (“@information-defense.com”) was not created until 23 January 2009, and that therefore this email could not have been sent in 2008 from the email address given. The defendant...
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