Bitcoin File Format Possibly Copyrightable According To New UK Court Of Appeal Decision

• Published date: 24 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Technology, Copyright, Fin Tech
• Law Firm: Gowling WLG
• Author: Mr Matthew Estabrooks and Dainelle Barham

Dr. Craig Wright - the Australian businessman who claims to be the creator of the Bitcoin system and the author of the Bitcoin source code and "White Paper" - successfully appealed a UK High Court decision that denied his request to serve a copyright infringement claim on defendants outside of the UK.

In order to serve extra-jurisdictional defendants, Dr. Wright needed to show that his copyright infringement claim raised a serious issue to be tried. The High Court determined that Dr. Wright's claim to ownership of the copyright in the Bitcoin File Format did not meet this test. The UK Court of Appeal disagreed, overruled the High Court decision, and granted Dr. Wright's request to serve extra-jurisdictional defendants with his copyright claim.

Denied in the Court of First Instance

High Court judge, Justice Mellor, agreed with Dr. Wright on three key points. First, Justice Mellor agreed that Dr. Wright "expended substantial skill and judgement in creating the Bitcoin File Format, such that the originality/intellectual creativity requirement [was] met."¹ Further, the Justice agreed that Dr. Wright "devised and created the Bitcoin File Format in the course of writing the code for the Bitcoin System."² Last, Justice Mellor agreed that two works could be created at the same time.³

However, Justice Mellor disagreed with Dr. Wright on the key issue of fixation. The Court held that Dr. Wright erred in his assumption that the fixation requirement was automatically met when the Bitcoin program ran. Since the Bitcoin File Format was not "recorded, in writing or otherwise," which is a key component to establishing fixation, the Bitcoin File Format was not fixed. Therefore, Dr. Wright had no real prospect of establishing copyright in the File Format. The Justice then listed further related reasons for the denial:

1. Dr. Wright failed to identify the alleged copyrighted "work" relating to the Bitcoin File Format.
2. There was insufficient evidence to show that the "Bitcoin File Format [was] set out in any part of the software or early blocks written to the Bitcoin Blockchain, as opposed to the Bitcoin Software simply reading and writing files in that format."⁴ In other words, for fixation to occur the content needs to indicate the structure of the Bitcoin File Format.

Justice Mellor held that Dr. Wright failed to establish a serious issue to be tried. As a result, Dr. Wright's request to serve the extra-jurisdictional defendants on that aspect of the claim was denied.

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