Today, Dr Craig S Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto despite providing no concrete evidence, has issued a settlement offer to members of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and all other parties involved. The letter, published on Wright’s personal blog, outlines the terms of the proposed settlement.
The letter from Dr. Wright expresses a willingness to reach settlement on multiple cases of prolonged legal confrontations that he started. The proposed settlement offers to waive Wrights database rights and copyrights relating to BTC, BCH and ABC databases, and “to offer an irrevocable license in perpetuity to my opposing parties who collectively control, operate, and/or own those databases.” It is important to note that Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized and distributed ledger, meaning no one individual or organization owns and controls the network.
“Obviously if he’s not Satoshi (which is COPA’s case) then the “database rights and copyrights” are not his to grant licenses to,” reportedly said WizSec Bitcoin Research. “Calvin and Craig probably think they’re playing 5D chess by building this “offer” on such an obvious false premise.”
A part of Wright’s terms is that COPA must not create, copy, or fork Bitcoin. It is important to note that Craig Wright’s Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV), is a fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which was a fork of the first and original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC).
Wright also wrote verbiage in his offer that attempts to continue his stance as self proclaiming himself as Satoshi Nakamoto, demanding in his offer that entities shall cease claiming that they represent Bitcoin, and must publicly acknowledge what he believes Bitcoin was created for.
While it may seem to those who are not up to date on these trials that Wrights offer is reasonable, many Bitcoiners in the community who have been involved in reporting on these cases think Wright is just doing this to “keep on scamming with the Satoshi moniker, and avoid jail time for his 500+ self-made forgeries.”
“Been following COPA – Wright case pending in UK, and I have to say, in 35+ years of litigating I’ve never seen anything in 35 years like the level of document falsification in a lawsuit by a party,” said J Nicholas Gross of Berkeley IP Law Mastery. “At this point I don’t understand how CW’s lawyers can continue to represent a party they can clearly see is committing fraud on the court right in plain sight and now with their complicity?”
The response from COPA members and other involved parties will be pivotal in determining the trajectory of the dispute. COPA, an organization advocating for patent non-aggression in the crypto community, faces the decision of whether to engage in settlement discussions or continue the legal battle. It has until 4pm on January 31st to review and accept or deny the offer from Dr Wright.