London’s High Court has ruled in favor of Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator and the proponent of Fork Bitcoin SV, ordering Cobra, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin.org, to takedown Bitcoin whitepaper from the website.
The court decision was made in a default judgment as Cobra decided not to appear in court to defend its side. Last month, Cobra tweeted that ‘defending against nonsense is a waste of time’.
According to the court order, bitcoin.org now has to remove the whitepaper and display a notice of the court order for six months. In addition, Cobra will have to pay £35,000 ($48,600) to Wright to cover his legal costs.
I don't think you could get a better advertisement of *why* Bitcoin is necessary than what happened today.
Rules enforced through cryptography are far more superior than rules based on whoever can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court. — Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) June 28, 2021
A Fraud or Legit?
Wright, a controversial figure in the cryptocurrency industry, moved to the UK court against Cobra, alleging that bitcoin.org infringed the copyright of the whitepaper, which Wright believes to be his intellectual property. Court proceedings began on February 24, 2021, and Cobra was served out of the jurisdiction by an email on April 21.
The majority of the crypto industry supported bitcoin.org and popular platforms, including Coinbase, started to host the Bitcoin whitepaper to protest Wright’s claims.
“Dr Wright does not wish to restrict access to his White Paper,” wrote Simon Cohen, a Senior Associate at ONTER LLP that legally represented Wright. “However, he does not agree that it should be used by supporters and developers of alternative assets, such as Bitcoin Core, to promote or otherwise misrepresent those assets as being Bitcoin given that they do not support or align with the vision for Bitcoin as he set out in his White Paper.”
Furthermore, Wright brought a libel lawsuit against Roger Ver, but the UK court later dismissed the suit over jurisdictional issues.
