Case management of the docketed actions
In January 2023, four actions were docketed to me:
The first was the COPA action.
The second and third actions (the Coinbase and Kraken Actions) were issued on the same day by Dr Wright and associated companies against two sets of defendants which have been referred to as the Coinbase and Kraken Defendants respectively. In each of those actions, the claim is for passing off by reference to the term Bitcoin. The claimants claim to own goodwill in the term Bitcoin, underpinned by what are alleged to be important and defining characteristics including those designated in the Particulars of Claim as the ‘Bitcoin Characteristics’. The cause of action in passing off is said to be sufficient to prevent third parties (including the Coinbase and Kraken Defendants) from using the term Bitcoin in relation to digital assets with tickers BTC and BCH.
The fourth action was IL-2022-000069 between Dr Wright (and two companies) and 26 Defendants (Wright v BTC Core), which I refer to as ‘the BTC Core action’. In this action, Dr Wright claims to be the owner of certain database rights which he says subsist in three databases, namely (i) the Bitcoin Blockchain, (ii) the Bitcoin Blockchain as it stood on 1 August 2017 at 14.11 – up to and including block 478,558 and (iii) another part of the Bitcoin Blockchain made in a particular period (the details of which do not matter for present purposes). Dr Wright also says he (or one of the Claimants) owns the copyrights which subsist in the Bitcoin White Paper and in the Bitcoin File Format. The Defendants to the BTC Core claim include COPA, various other corporate entities which are members of COPA (and for that reason have not themselves played a role in this Trial) and the Developers.
After these cases were docketed to me, the first applications I had to deal with were at a Joint CMC listed in the Coinbase and Kraken Actions on 25th & 26th May 2023. One of the applications was by the Coinbase and Kraken Defendants seeking a stay of each of those actions pending Judgment in the COPA Action. This was a logical application for these Defendants to make since (a) whether Dr Wright was Satoshi would be determined in the COPA action and (b) they were members of COPA.
However, it did not seem to me to be satisfactory to make directions in those two actions without consideration of the other two. Hence, I directed a further Joint CMC, this time in all four actions, which took place on 15th June 2023. The same point occurred to Dr Wright’s team very shortly before the hearing – they wrote to Dr Wright’s opponents in all four actions suggesting that, since the identity issue arose in all four actions, it should be tried by way of preliminary issue. As a result, at that hearing there was considerable debate as to what should be ordered to be tried by way of preliminary issue. In the result, I ordered that the trial set in the COPA Action should be a Joint Trial of (a) the COPA Action and (b) a preliminary issue in the BTC Core Claim of the Identity Issue, namely whether Dr Wright is the pseudonymous ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, i.e. the person who created Bitcoin in 2009. On agreeing to be bound by the result of that Joint Trial, the Coinbase and Kraken Defendants agreed to a stay of their actions. I also reset the timetable to trial in the COPA Action.
At that point, the BTC Core claim had not advanced very far, so the active defendants to that claim – the Developers – had a lot of work to do to catch up with the progress which had been made in the COPA Action. I ordered the provision to the Developers of the disclosure in the COPA Action, but further directions as to the involvement of the Developers in the Joint Trial were reserved to a later date.
Subsequently the action brought by Tulip Trading Ltd against the Bitcoin Association for BSV (a Swiss Verein) and fifteen individuals (being or including the Developers), BL-2021-000313, was also docketed to me.