The cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose claim to be bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto was demolished by the High Court last year has been penalised for submitting AI-generated ‘hallucinations’ in an application for permission to appeal. In a separate hearing, a judge today also agreed to grant a general civil restraint order against Dr Craig Wright to prevent him conducting what the court heard was ‘legal terrorism’.
Wright, who did not attend today’s hearing and was not represented, was ordered to pay a total of £225,000 in costs.
In a costs ruling in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Arnold noted that he had dismissed Wright’s application to appeal last year’s High Court judgment as totally without merit. He criticised the ‘exceptional, wholly unnecessary and wholly disproportionate’ volume and complexity of Wright’s application, which he said ‘risked seriously misleading the court’. He ordered Wright to pay the £125,000 costs of his opponents, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance.
Phil Sherrell, partner at international firm Bird & Bird, who acted for COPA, said Wright’s use of AI had led to him relying on non-existent caselaw and a number of entirely false statements about the proceedings at first instance. ‘This is a stark warning to litigants, and in particular litigants in person, about the risks of using generative AI tools to create court documents.’
Meanwhile the High Court judge in the litigation, Mr Justice Mellor, today agreed an application by COPA for a general civil restraint order, barring him from litigation for three years. For COPA, Jonathan Hough KC argued that the highest level of restraint order was needed to curtail Wright’s ‘legal terrorism’. He suggested that otherwise Wright might attempt to sue his former solicitors for negligence or breach of confidence. ‘There is a clear risk that he will resume his legal terrorism,’ the court heard.
The judge also ordered Wright to pay £100,000 costs on the indemnity basis.
