Jury wins bitcoin case against ex-business partner

Dec 6 Reuters - A computer scientist who claimed to be the inventor of virtual currency prevailed in a Florida jury trial on Monday over whether the property of a former business partner deserved half of a bitcoin cache worth $54 billion.

The Miami jury cleared Craig Wright on nearly all issues of the dispute, including that half of the 1.1 million bitcoins in dispute belonged to the family of Dave Kleiman, the former partner and computer forensics expert.

While the jurors concluded that Wright was not liable for fraud, they awarded $100 million in intellectual property rights to W&K Information Defense Research LLC, a joint venture between the men. The trial began on November 1.

This has been a good outcome and I feel completely vindicated," Wright said in a video message. There are still more fights. We're going to make everything change from cryptocurrencies to digital cash, the way it's meant to be. According to court papers, the 1.1 million bitcoin had been mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, whose white paper Bitcoin: A Peer-to- Peer Electronic Cash System described a framework for what would become bitcoin in October 2008.

In 2016 Wright claimed he was Nakamoto, which was a pseudonym. The claim is disputed.

Kleiman's family contended that he and Wright had been friends and business partners, but that Wright stole the bitcoin stemming from their relationship.

The jury awarded $100 million in intellectual property rights to the Kleimans and gave them their fair share of what Dave helped create, according to lawyers for W&K and Kleiman's estate. In May, the Australia-born Wright, who later moved to London, sued https: www.reuters. Australia-wright launches-lawsuit over 57 bln-bitcoin haul 2021 -- 05 -- 12 16 software developers to secure around 111,000 bitcoins now worth about $5.4 billion that he claims he owns.