Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Craig Steven Wright

A party seeking declaratory relief bears the legal burden of proving the facts essential to the declaration. In civil proceedings, including allegations of fraud or forgery, the standard remains the balance of probabilities. Serious allegations may require cogent evidence, but there is no heightened standard of proof.

Findings should ordinarily be made from the evidence as a whole. Reliable contemporaneous documents generally carry greater weight than recollection, but the reliability of the documents themselves must first be assessed. A court may draw rational inferences from unexplained absences, inconsistencies and cumulative improbabilities.

A negative declaration may properly be granted where it has practical utility and resolves a real dispute between the parties. A private digital-signature demonstration is not reliable proof of possession of a private key unless the message is new and the verification process is independently controlled and trustworthy.

Crypto Open Patent Alliance brought the COPA Claim against Dr Craig Steven Wright, seeking declarations concerning his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the Bitcoin White Paper and creator of Bitcoin. Dr Wright and associated companies brought the BTC Core Claim, in which the same identity issue arose as a preliminary issue concerning alleged copyright and database rights.

The claims were tried jointly before Mr Justice Mellor. The central question was whether Dr Wright was the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, including whether he authored the Bitcoin White Paper and initial Bitcoin software. The trial also addressed extensive allegations that documents relied upon by Dr Wright had been forged or manipulated.

1. Disposition. The court found that the evidence overwhelmingly established that Dr Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto. It declared that he was not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper, did not operate under the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym between 2008 and 2011, did not create the Bitcoin system and was not the author of the initial Bitcoin software.
2. Burden and standard. COPA bore the burden in the COPA Claim of proving that Dr Wright was not Satoshi, while Dr Wright bore the burden on the identity issue in the BTC Core Claim. The applicable standard was the balance of probabilities. The court rejected any separate or heightened standard for fraud and forgery allegations, while taking account of inherent probabilities where appropriate.
3. Assessment of evidence. The court made positive findings wherever reasonably possible. It relied particularly on reliable contemporaneous documents, expert forensic evidence, technical evidence, inconsistencies in Dr Wright’s accounts and the cumulative effect of the evidence. The scale and persistence of forged or inauthentic documents materially undermined his case and supported findings that the documents had been produced by him.
4. Digital proof. A reliable signing demonstration could have been conducted simply by signing a new message and allowing independent verification. The private sessions adopted complex procedures which could readily have been spoofed. The Sartre blog reproduced publicly available transaction data and did not prove possession of any private key. The court therefore gave the signing sessions no probative support.
5. Declarations. Negative declarations were appropriate because they had utility in resolving real disputes in the COPA and BTC Core Claims and in preventing further assertions of rights based on Dr Wright’s alleged authorship. Questions of further injunctive relief were deferred to a form of order hearing.