Craig Wright, the self-claimed inventor of Bitcoin, recently lost a copyright case in a UK court. According to a Coindesk story, Wright has claimed that derivatives of his invention, such as Bitcoin Cash, violate his intellectual property rights.
The UK court hearing over the case has determined that the Bitcoin Cash file format is copyright protected. The decision ultimately goes against the man who claims to be the creator of the most well-known cryptocurrency in the world.
Although his name may still be unfamiliar to some, Craig Wright is the man who claims to have invented Bitcoin. Wright, who goes by the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto,” claims to be the person or group behind the 2008 Bitcoin white paper, according to Coindesk.
To “stop the functioning of Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) since they violate his intellectual property rights,” Wright has filed a copyright lawsuit. On Tuesday, the case’s judge, James Mellor, rejected Wright’s arguments.
Wright has failed to provide evidence of “how they were initially recorded,” according to Mellor, who claimed that the Bitcoin file format cannot be regarded as literary work. Wright failed a copyright law test known as fixation, which is a sequence of a header and a series of transactions that constitute a block. This failure sealed the outcome.
“I do not see any prospect of the law as currently stated and understood in the caselaw allowing copyright protection of subject matter which is not pressed or fixed anywhere,” Mellor stated. “It remains the case that no relevant ‘work’ has been identified containing content which defines the structure of the Bitcoin File Format,” Mellor concluded.
Furthermore, the court stated that “issues about copyright to the 2008 White Paper, and whether Wright is indeed the author, will be subject to further findings.”