Wednesday Whimsies

It's a new year, which brings plenty of IP news and opportunities. This Kat is pleased to share the latest updates with readers.

Thank you and all the best!

Photo by Ioana Motoc via Pexels

As we start the new year, the IPKat is sad to say farewell to three of our fabulous GuestKats. We wish them the best with their next steps and look forward to future collaborations in some other capacity. As they move onto new things, a reminder that we are looking for new GuestKats to join the team (details here).

Dr Chijioke Okorie, who joined the IPKat at the start of 2019 as our first Africa Correspondent, has been promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Pretoria, effective 1 January 2025. The whole IPKat team congratulates her on this achievement. We wish you the best as you continue to grow your career, Chijioke!

Anna Maria Stein is stepping down after being a GuestKat for the last two years (and having made several guest contributions before that). We have enjoyed her posts across all areas of IP and look forward to receiving more guest contributions in the future. Thank you and all the best, Anna Maria!

Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot joined the IPKat as an InternKat at the start of 2023 and then continued as a GuestKat. He kept readers informed about the latest developments in trade marks, designs, AI, and copyright law. We appreciate all your work over the last two years and we wish you good luck with your future endeavours, Kevin! 

EPO Case Law Updates

Cohausz & Florack are offering two webinars about the case law of the European Patent Office, including procedural and substantive aspects of the recent decisions. Both webinars will be conducted in English. 

• Webinar 1 - Engineering, physics and digital innovations (22 January 2025, 16:00 to 17:30 CET)
• Webinar 2 - Chemistry, Pharma and Life Sciences (11 February 2015, 16:00 to 17:30 CET)

You can read more details about topics and speakers here. The registration form is available here. The registration deadline is one day before each webinar.

CIPIL celebrates its 20th birthday

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) at the University of Cambridge marks its 20th anniversary this academic year. CIPIL recently took stock of their collective achievements and activities in a post here. 

Readers will already know that this year's CIPIL Annual Lecture has been scheduled for 18 March 2025 to be delivered by Robert P. Merges. We look forward to hearing more details about other forthcoming CIPIL events, including their 2025 Spring Conference and their collaboration on a conference to be held at City University on IP Remedies over the past 50 years.

Bitcoin IP dispute ends (again) with Craig Wright found in contempt

If you missed the news shortly before the holidays, there has been another development in the dramatic and long-running legal disputes involving Australian computer scientist, Craig Wright. For many years, he has claimed to be the person who wrote the original Bitcoin code and the author of the so-called Bitcoin White Paper published in 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Earlier in 2024, after years of expensive and burdensome litigation in the matter of Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) v Dr Craig Steven Wright, Mr Justice Mellor handed down his judgment: the evidence was overwhelming that Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper nor the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto from 2008 to 2011. The Court also dismissed Wright's claims of passing off, which was based on his assertion of ownership of goodwill in the name "Bitcoin". Furthermore, the Court was "entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly," especially by forging documents to support his claim.

That judgment and subsequent orders were supposed to be the end of the IP aspects of the matter, but Wright recently initiated a new claim seeking damages of more than £911 billion. Wright also made allegations of judicial bias, but Mr Justice Mellor found these to be totally without merit. Amongst his IP claims, this Kat was amused to see that Wright repeatedly described his rights to the name "Bitcoin" as a "champagne" passing off case (i.e. extended passing off) and argued that "that such a claim does not require him to assert authorship or ownership," so it would not be a breach of the earlier injunctions. However, Mr Justice Mellor found that Wright's passing off argument was "incoherent in its language and nonsensical in its legal reasoning."  

COPA sought to commit Wright for contempt. Wright failed to attend the contempt hearing. Mr Justice Mellor delivered a judgment on 19 December 2024, holding Wright in contempt of court on five separate grounds, since bringing the new claim was a serious breach of the earlier injunctions. [Merpel: This is not his first rodeo: Wright was previously held in contempt during legal proceedings in Australia and the United States]. The Court then ordered that "Dr Wright shall be committed to His Majesty’s Prison Pentonville for a period of 12 months from the date of his apprehension" but that his committal be "suspended until 20 December 2026, provided that Dr Wright does not commit any further breach of the Final Order in the period until 20 December 2026." 

We will see whether there are any further developments in this matter...