PANews reported on December 19 that Craig Wright, the man who once pretended to be the anonymous founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was once again put on trial in court. This time, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) is debating Wright's 900 million pounds (about 1.1 billion U.S. dollars) lawsuit against intellectual property rights related to the Bitcoin system in October, questioning whether it constitutes contempt of court. Previously, in a ruling in March, the judge had explicitly prohibited him from filing a lawsuit against him for claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
The two-day trial is expected to conclude later Thursday, with COPA seeking a prison sentence for Wright. The coalition has been backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. "We propose that the court order an initial sentence of 18 months in prison for Wright, with an additional six months in prison if he fails to mitigate his contempt of court by immediately ceasing his claims in violation of the court order," the court document detailed.
In March, Judge James Mellor ruled that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Mellor subsequently issued a court order barring Wright from bringing lawsuits in the UK and other jurisdictions over the claim.
