Australian Computer Scientist in Contempt of Court

LONDON (Reuters) – An Australian computer scientist, Craig Wright, was found in contempt of court for filing a £911 billion ($1.2 trillion) lawsuit against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments company, Block.

Wright has long claimed to be the author of a 2008 white paper published under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto," which is considered the foundational text of bitcoin.

However, London's High Court ruled in May that Wright had "lied extensively and repeatedly" and had forged documents to support his claims, following a trial initiated by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). COPA sought to stop Wright from suing bitcoin developers.

COPA argued that Wright's lawsuit breached an injunction preventing him from claiming to be Satoshi or asserting ownership of bitcoin intellectual property rights.

On Thursday, Judge James Mellor ruled that Wright was in contempt of court, with the ruling coming after a hearing Wright did not attend the previous day. Last month, Wright was also denied permission to appeal the court's decision that he did not invent bitcoin.