‘This case has the makings of a great film’: Bird & Bird duo on defeating imposter’s Bitcoin claims

After Craig Wright's claims to be the Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto were spectacularly dismissed at the UK High Court, Phil Sherrell and Tristan Sherliker of Bird & Bird, counsel for the winning party, tell WIPR why this was one case they'll never forget.

This week marks the culmination of a case that has kept more than a few in the cryptocurrency world awake at night.

Justice James Mellor delivered his full judgment on May 20, in the rights dispute between the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and Australian scientist, Craig Wright—who has long claimed to be the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

In recent years, Wright has sued developers alleging they had infringed his copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper, as well as firing defamation suits at bloggers and journalists who disputed his claimed identity.

Not anymore. After stunning the court back in March by handing an unexpectedly early victory to COPA on the last day of the six-week trial, Mellor’s lengthy and excoriating judgment goes much further.

“Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is,” wrote Mellor.

Wright, he added, “lied extensively” in his evidence during a UK court case regarding his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto and had forged documents to support his bogus claims.

While his careful reasoning runs for nearly 400 pages and more than 1,700 paragraphs, Justice Mellor’s conclusion is blunt and scathing.

“Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this court’s process.

“It is clear that Dr Wright engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the courts as a vehicle for fraud.”

Phil Sherrell, a partner at Bird & Bird who successfully acted for COPA, described the judgment as “a devastating blow” for Wright, whose “fraudulent claim” to be Satoshi Nakamoto had been “comprehensively demolished by Mr Justice Mellor”.

He added: “We are incredibly proud to have played our part in bringing certainty to the cryptocurrency community, who can now continue to innovate safely in the knowledge that Wright will no longer be able to threaten them with claims to own IP in the building blocks of cryptocurrencies.”

To explore this complex and unusual case, WIPR sat down with Sherrell and barrister Tristan Sherliker, who also worked on the legal dispute, to find out exactly how they prevailed, and why they will never forget the events of March 14.

WIPR: What are the major implications of this decision?

Sherrell: First of all, it means that the cryptocurrency community can now proceed free of Wright’s threats to enforce IP rights across all aspects of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

He claimed copyrights in various aspects of the Bitcoin infrastructure and ecosystem, rights in passing off in relation to the word ‘Bitcoin’, as well as database rights relating to the blockchain. All of those claims are now dead.

Additionally, his defamation claims against journalists who accused him of being a fake are at an end, so the community can proceed free from his threats.

In terms of wider implications, this is a really good example of how the English courts are a great forum for cases where you need to really delve into the details in order to win.

Wright was cross-examined over nine days. In the end, there were lots of factual witnesses—many of whose evidence was on very small, yet very important points.

And the court analysed lots of claims that documents were created fraudulently and ruled on each of them. It’s a tour de force to deliver such a complex analysis so quickly—two months after the end of trial. COPA is based in the US, and it shows how well the English courts can perform for clients around the globe, especially when there’s a lot at stake.

Sherliker: We acted for a nonprofit that was seeking justice against what it perceived as an injustice. And we were struck by the strong sense of community—not only in cryptocurrency, but in open source generally.

There have been a lot of stories recently about bad actors trying to inveigle themselves into open source projects, take them over from the inside, or take advantage of what is a loose affiliation of people working towards a common goal.

But this instance was a good example of the community coming together to achieve—by piecing together many little pieces of evidence—one common goal. That’s wonderful to see. And the fact that the court was able to take on board those extremely complicated fact patterns, apply them, and come to the right result is fantastic.

WIPR: Can you tell us about your strategy, and why it was successful?

Sherrell: We came to the case in early 2021, and Wright had been claiming to be Satoshi for almost six years at that point. So he had a huge head start on us in terms of building up his story, whereas we were completely new to it.

We adopted a piece-by-piece approach, analysing every aspect of what he relied upon to justify his claims, working out how we could contradict it, and which elements were most likely to be pursued at trial.

And it required a huge team effort within our office here in London, our Australian office which investigated some of the facts relating to Wright’s early days, our Polish office, and then people throughout the cryptocurrency community who had been analysing Wright’s rights claims online ever since 2013 and picking holes in them.

But this was the first time there had been a systematic exercise to try to disprove them, which involved finding the facts, expert witnesses, and the documents to actually do that. So it was quite a painstaking process—like a jigsaw puzzle.

And it was only at trial that all the pieces came together—you can see from the ruling on the last day of trial how struck the judge was by the overwhelming nature of our evidence.

Indeed, he says in one paragraph: “I tried to identify whether there was any reliable evidence to support Dr Wright’s claim and concluded there was none.”

WIPR: It was a highly unusual and complex case. But what was the most challenging aspect of the proceedings?

Sherrell: The most challenging aspect in terms of supervising the case was going back to the early days—there were so many theories out there as to how to disprove Wright’s claims. If we’d gone through them and brought evidence on all of them, we would have needed months and months in court.

And so that process of prioritisation, selection, and nailing the points that were most likely to get the bang for our buck was a huge challenge.

We were constantly questioning ourselves, asking whether we should come back to some of those ideas we put to one side earlier, if we should reprioritise, and we were continually working out which balls to juggle.

It was fascinating, but definitely challenging to manage. The trial in the end was delayed by three weeks because Wright said he had yet more evidence he’d forgotten about, which he said was crucial. Yet not a single thing that he put forward was found to be reliable by the judge. It’s quite extraordinary.

When Wright was being cross examined on some of the—fairly basic in our eyes—aspects of Bitcoin technology, it just fell apart for him. He paused for a long time, looking confused, and basically couldn’t answer the question—one which for any genuine Bitcoin developer would have been pretty evident. It was quite a jaw-dropping moment.

Sherliker: We came into this case with a totally open mind. Because we had the assertion of Wright and then what we refer to as ‘his debunking’ online. But those are just two sides. We couldn’t really substantiate either one of them before our analysis. We had the general opinion that Wright may come up with evidence that he’s Satoshi, and then we would have at least uncovered the truth in that way.

But that’s not what the truth was. There were different types of witnesses that he brought forward, including experts who were instructed to challenge our side’s forensic analysis, and they ended up agreeing with our experts.

So our experts did their independent job and found all of these indications of forgery. When [Wright’s experts were] challenged by our expert, there was nothing they could do but agree. It was a fascinating process, and quite a good example of the English system working—because the instruction of independent experts should lead to some agreement if they’re rational and unbiased.

WIPR: In a rare move, Justice Mellor ruled against Wright on the last day of trial in March rather than waiting for the delivery of his full judgment. What was the atmosphere and experience like?

Sherrell: I’ll remember for the longest the sense that justice was being dispensed immediately at the end of trial, and the hairs standing up at the back of my neck.

The way judgments are delivered in this country means that they often land months after the trial has finished.

Usually, the clients are back in their own country. But it was quite different finding out in court with clients present. The whole legal team was absolutely thrilled, and it’s fair to say this case has the makings of a great film.

Sherliker: As the case progressed, the more technical it got—and boy it got technical—and the more confident we were that we could present these details to a judge who would understand.

In the case of a jury trial, you might be extremely tentative when following some of the technical analysis, because you may not be able to rely on everybody [on the jury] understanding it. But we knew that there was a technically competent judge who would scrutinise the evidence and our depth of analysis. So, it was a struggle that finally paid off. And everyone in that courtroom will always remember March 14.

WIPR: There’s still a big question over who exactly is Satoshi Nakamoto. Do you think it will ever be conclusively revealed?

Sherliker: It’s worth saying that it’s never been our objective to 'out' or investigate Satoshi, out of respect to Satoshi’s privacy concerns and efforts in this regard after creating Bitcoin. But beyond that, other people can continue to speculate.

Sherrell: I’d say the door is very firmly shut in Wright’s face. If the real Satoshi had wanted to be known, then they would have made themselves known long ago. I’d be quite surprised if anyone plausibly came forward now.

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