A federal jury found that Craig Wright, who claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin, was not in partnership with the late computer forensics expert Dave Kleiman. The court ruled he would have to pay damages of $100 million in compensation for conversion to W&K Info Defense Research, a company Kleiman founded in Florida.
After the verdict was pronounced, Wright said:
I feel remarkably happy and vindicated. I am not a fraud, and I never have been.
According to Wright’s testimony, Dave Kleiman was a friend who helped him edit a whitepaper clarifying the foundation of Bitcoin, but not a business partner. Dave Kleiman died in 2013. His brother, Ira Kleiman, sued on behalf of Dave Kleiman’s estate and W&K.
No ruling on identity of Satoshi
The court wasn’t asked to issue a judgment on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the purported inventor of Bitcoin. Wright’s claims to be Satoshi have been widely discredited.
Vel Freedman, one of Kleiman’s attorneys, was happy with the verdict although it was much less than what he had asked for: $126 billion for intellectual property, up to $36 billion for the value of bitcoin in dispute, and $17 billion in punitive damages. Kleiman’s attorneys issued the following statement:
We are immensely gratified that our client, W&K Information Defense Research LLC, has won $100,000,000 reflecting that Craig Wright wrongfully took bitcoin-related assets from W&K. Many years ago, Craig Wright told the Kleiman family that he and Dave Kleiman developed revolutionary Bitcoin based intellectual property. Despite those admissions, Wright refused to give the Kleimans their fair share of what Dave helped create and instead took those assets for himself.
During the second month of the trial, the jury reached the verdict that Dave Kleiman wasn’t a business partner of Wright’s and no share of the partnership’s assets is due to plaintiffs. They believe this includes about 1.1 million BTC and intellectual property such as software.
Wright owes the company $100 million for intellectual property, but the jury didn’t state what intellectual property the defendant had converted.
Ira Kleiman lapses into depression
Ira Kleiman has told CoinDesk he was depressed. Since the beginning of the trial, he has largely avoided the press unlike Wright, who has many active supporters. Ira Kleiman added a section to the website DaveKleiman.com with details he hoped would reach the general public, such as emails Wright had written, with things like:
Dave Kleiman and I started mining in 2009. So we have a few things that will interest them. It is a shame Dave died last year before fruition, but all is moving ahead. I was not the person doing the mining. Dave was. Satoshi was a team. Without the other part of the team, he died.
