The High Court of the United Kingdom has issued a World Freezing Order against the assets of computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright, according to legal documents filed on July 5.
This action was taken to assist Peter McCormack, a podcast host and entrepreneur who was sued for libel by Wright in 2019, in recovering approximately 1.5 million British pounds ($1.9 million) in legal costs.
Cointelegraph attempted to contact McCormack for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The World Freezing Order against Craig Wright’s assets, sourced from the United Kingdom National Archives.
Craig Wright v. Peter McCormack
The legal dispute between Wright and McCormack originated from comments McCormack made in several tweets and a YouTube video, where he accused Wright of falsely claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin (BTC).
In response to McCormack’s statements, Wright filed a defamation lawsuit against him, alleging harm to his reputation.
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Court confirms Wright is not Satoshi
Wright first asserted he was Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016 and used this claim to pursue legal action against 13 Bitcoin Core developers. The Australian computer scientist argued that these developers had infringed his copyrights on the Bitcoin white paper and certain aspects of the decentralized protocol, such as Bitcoin’s database.
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), an industry group comprising some of the defendants in Wright’s lawsuit, presented over 50 pieces of evidence, accusing Wright of producing forged documents. In their final arguments, COPA’s attorneys stated, “He [Wright] has fabricated an entire personal history, providing a continuous stream of forged documents to support it.”
After reviewing the evidence, the court concluded that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, thereby settling the intellectual property dispute that could have had significant ramifications for the Bitcoin community.
Judge James Mellor’s pivotal decision definitively disproving Wright’s claims to be the Bitcoin inventor laid the legal groundwork for absolving McCormack of defamation charges and securing his right to reimbursement for legal expenses.
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