Craig Wright sent enemies to legal ‘hell,’ says judge in restraining order

A British High Court has issued a restraining order against computer scientist Craig Wright preventing him from filing further defamation suits. 

In a May 12 judgment, High Court Judge Edward Mellor said Wright’s repeated false claims and aggressive legal actions created legal “hell” for individuals and developers in the Bitcoin (BTC) community, adding that Wright sought to “weaponise legal systems” to intimidate and silence critics.

His lawsuits forced people into costly and time-consuming legal defenses, often based on fabricated evidence, the judge added as he handed out a General Civil Restraint Order or injunction against Wright, prohibiting him from filing any more civil claims or applications in the High Court. 

The court highlighted how this strategy was part of a pattern of abusing the legal system to assert false claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto.

“It is apparent that Dr Wright had substantial financial backing from the start of his campaign, and his defamation claims were deliberately unequal battles,” said Judge Mellor.  

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) brought the claim in 2021, seeking negative declarations and injunctive relief because of the threats Wright had made against its members, including crypto blogger Peter McCormack and Magnus Granath (aka Hodlonaut).

His defamation claims “put each man through five years of personal hell,” Mellor wrote, adding that allegations were “part of a deliberate strategy whereby Dr Wright and his backers sought to establish the claim [that Dr Wright was Satoshi] by unequal contests.”

COPA is a nonprofit community formed to encourage the adoption and advancement of crypto technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to innovation.

Related: Crypto group COPA launches bid to stop blockchain ‘patent trolls’

The threats its members received “were having a serious chilling effect on development and innovation in the cryptocurrency industry,” said Judge Mellor. 

“Dr Wright’s actions have not only affected the individuals he has sued,” he continued. “They have also caused significant disruption to innovation in an important technology industry.” 

Last March, the British High Court ruled that Craig Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, did not operate under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and was not involved in the creation of Bitcoin.

In July, Wright issued a legal disclaimer on his website, emphatically stating that he was not the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

In December, the Australian computer scientist was given a one-year suspended sentence in the United Kingdom for contempt of court.

Wright has also filed libel lawsuits against Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin pioneer Adam Back during the almost decade-long “faketoshi” saga. 

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