As both parties involved in the dispute tell Cointelegraph that they are ready to “go all the way to the end”, the dramatic events surrounding the ownership of the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper are likely to enter the courts.
On January 21, the lawyer of Craig Wright, who claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, threatened to take legal action against the owners of the two Bitcoin websites. Wright claimed to be the original copyright holder of the Bitcoin white paper and threatened to take legal action to request the two websites to delete copies of their locally hosted files.
Since then, the Bitcoincore.org website deleted the white paper on the grounds that it was involved in a costly lawsuit, which was related to Wright, who likes to go to court. This lawsuit may be fruitless and not worthy of trouble.
However, the owner of Bitcoin.org was also a target of Wright’s attack. He still refuses to delete the white paper and said he has no intention of doing so.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, anonymous developer Cobra said that if a legal action is brought against him, he is willing to defend himself in court.
“Actually, the legal proceedings have not yet started, but we are ready. If we get there, we will do our best to defend ourselves.”
CoinGeek’s Ed Pownall, who has spoken on behalf of Craig Wright in the past, told Cointelegraph that Cobra and others who refuse to comply have 4 options:
1. Don’t respond, do nothing: this will cause Craig to sue them for copyright infringement
2. Reply to our letter and tell us what to do: as mentioned above
3. Reply to our letter and tell us that they are deleting the white paper from their website, and they did so: no action will be taken against them
4. Do not reply to our letter, but still remove the white paper from their website: follow 3
When receiving these four final conclusions from the Wright team, Cobra’s reaction was straightforward and seemed to indicate that he was more inclined to choose 1. He said:
“As I thought, we will not respond to them.”
Pownall said that if Cobra fails to respond to the legal process, Wright’s lawyers will be willing to apply to the court for a default verdict, that is, if the defendant fails to respond or provide a defense, the verdict will be obtained without trial.
In 2019, Wright tried to sue Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin for defamation because the latter mocked Wright for calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto, calling him a liar. In this case, Buterin did not reply to the letter at all, and the deadline passed.
Wright has previously filed lawsuits against many people in the cryptocurrency field, including Bitcoin podcast host Peter McCormack, Bitcoin developer Adam Back, and Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver, all with varying degrees of success.