Self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright has signaled a possible legal battle against Apple over storing the bitcoin white paper on his computer, claiming it infringes copyright laws.
Responding to a Twitter user who asked whether Apple could be “in breach of copyright” for storing the bitcoin whitepaper on its computer, the Australian computer scientist said: “Yes.”
Wright has long claimed that he is the creator of bitcoin, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
The computer scientist has also argued that his intellectual property rights have been infringed upon by bitcoin spin-offs derived from the cryptocurrency since he created the original blockchain.
He has also filed several cases regarding this matter.
Back in 2021, Wright filed a lawsuit against the website Bitcoin.org for removing his copy of the bitcoin white paper from the website, claiming it violated copyright laws.
at that time, he won Technically a default judgment against Cobra, the operator of the Bitcoin.org website, because Cobra refused to testify under his real name or provide pseudonymous-compromising oral testimony in a British court hearing .
However, a recent ruling by a UK judge went against Wright’s claims that copyright law cannot be applied to something whose subject matter is not expressed or fixed anywhere.
The cryptocurrency community has long been skeptical of Wright’s claims to be the creator of bitcoin, and he has faced legal challenges to his claims in the past.
In 2022, he sued cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken over misrepresentation of “Bitcoin Core” as the actual bitcoin. Wright has argued that the real BTC is his Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).
Additionally, Wright has sued 15 developers to obtain 111,000 BTC worth $2.5 billion. Judge Colin Birs at London’s Court of Appeals has allowed the case to be heard.
Bitcoin white paper archived in Apple’s modern macOS
This week, news broke that the bitcoin white paper has been stored in every modern version of the operating system for Apple’s Mac computers.
As per blog dated 5th April Post From technologist Andy Bao, a PDF of the bitcoin white paper “has apparently been shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.”
Anyone can find a copy of the bitcoin basics text on the MacOS operating system using a simple command in Terminal.
Notably, Apple has a history of hiding files on its products in order to expose them to users.
For example, the game “Monty Python’s Absolute Waste of Time” was once hidden on Apple’s first CD-ROM, and the tech giant remained secretive about the fact after it was discovered.
The bitcoin white paper was published in 2008 by a person or group of people using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
While the identity of the author(s) remains a mystery, the document has been republished several times and is widely considered a seminal piece in the history of cryptocurrencies.