This posts is part of the litigation saga regarding the identify of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin (see Is Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto? and Is a worldwide freezing order justified in Bitcoin creator case?).
Following Mr Justice Mellor's decision that Dr Craig Wright was not Satoshi, which was given orally at the end of the five-week trial, the judge has now published a detailed judgment with his full reasoning.
Overwhelming evidence against Craig Wright being Satoshi
The judgment does not make good reading for Dr Wright, who had claimed that he wrote and published the Bitcoin White Paper and released the first version of the Bitcoin source code. He had also made allegations of copyright infringement against various parties.
Mellor J found that Wright “lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly”. Wright also deployed “technobabble” and most of his forgeries were “clumsy”. The judge said:
“Dr Wright has lied so much over so many years that, on certain points, it can be difficult to pinpoint what actually happened. Those difficulties do not detract from the fact that there is a very considerable body of evidence against Dr Wright being Satoshi. To the extent that it is said there is evidence supporting his claim, it is at best questionable or of very dubious relevance or entirely circumstantial and at worst, it is fabricated and/or based on documents I am satisfied have been forged on a grand scale by Dr Wright.”
The judge said his decision that Wright was not Satoshi was based on “overwhelming” evidence. He considered 47 separate allegations of forgery in the trial and found all of them proved. There were further cases of documents that were “inauthentic” according to reports made by a forensic documents expert.
Dr Wright forged documents over “a startling period of time”, said the judge, from 2014 up to and even during the trial held this year. The details of the forgery findings are set out in a detailed appendix to the judgment.
Mellor J concluded that Dr Wright's attempts to prove he was Satoshi and to assert copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper represented a “most serious abuse” of the Court's process, as he engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the courts as a vehicle for fraud. On the identity issue (the main issue in the trial), the judge said:
“I tried to identify whether there was any reliable evidence to support Dr Wright's claim and concluded there was none. That was why I concluded the evidence was overwhelming. The preparation of this Judgment and Appendix has only confirmed that conclusion.”
What does this mean?
This was a highly unusual case, which involved considerable amounts of documentary evidence (even after it was narrowed down during the litigation) and more than 20 days in court.
It may seem trite to say so, but the case proves above all that forensic analysis in court, including cross-examination, will expose attempts to mislead, lie or deceive. Anyone who, like Dr Wright, thinks they will get away with making serious allegations based on forged documents is likely to be found out by the courts, and suffer the consequences.
To find out more about the issues raised in this blog contact Rosie Burbidge, Intellectual Property Partner at Gunnercooke LLP in London - rosie.burbidge@gunnercooke.com