Your explication here brings to mind emails of your earlier UK court dealings wherein they were willing to acknowledge your *ahem* contributions to BitCoin, but only for purposes of holding you responsible for facilitating other's actions as progenitor of a system misused by the Other. ...
Nonsense. The UK Courts were simply getting close to the truth, that there are no personal property rights, or legal title, of individual entries within a database. Users of shared database systems are licencees at best. Such a declaration undermines the status quo of the cryptospace carefully constructed by corrupt agencies in the US declaring "property subject to taxation" and "commodity" decisions without technical or legal merit. UK Courts are not bound by such nonsense, hence the new law, rushed out to stop the Courts from revealing the truth. Let's see how it stacks up against intellectual property challenges, which will be the ultimate reveal.
Under UK law that comment is wrong in both principle and authority.
English law has long recognised property rights in intangibles where the law is capable of identifying the asset, the holder, and the enforceable rights attached to it. That position was made explicit, not denied, by the UK courts. The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts (2019) confirmed that cryptoassets are capable of being property under English law. That conclusion was adopted judicially in AA v Persons Unknown [2019] EWHC 3556 (Comm), where the High Court held that cryptoassets meet the classic Ainsworth criteria for property. The Court of Appeal reaffirmed the same approach in Ion Science Ltd v Persons Unknown [2020] EWHC (Comm), treating digital assets as property capable of proprietary injunctions.
The suggestion that users are merely “licensees of a shared database” misunderstands both law and fact. English law does not require tangibility or exclusivity in a physical sense. What matters is control, assignability, persistence, and enforceability against third parties. Cryptoassets satisfy those criteria precisely because the ledger records obligations and entitlements, not because it is “shared”. Bank deposits are recorded on shared ledgers. Securities are recorded on registries. Neither are reduced to bare licences.
The recent statutory intervention does not “stop courts revealing the truth”. The Law Commission’s work and the Property (Digital Assets etc.) legislation were introduced to remove residual uncertainty, not to negate property rights. Far from rejecting ownership, Parliament expressly recognised that digital objects can be personal property even where they do not fit historic categories of choses in possession or choses in action.
Nor is there any contradiction with taxation or commodity treatment. English law routinely recognises property interests for private law purposes while permitting different classifications for regulatory or tax analysis. That is not corruption; it is doctrinal separation. UK courts have never held that the absence of a physical bearer negates ownership.
Intellectual property challenges do not undermine this position. They reinforce it. Copyright, database rights, and confidential information all demonstrate that English law protects value embedded in information systems without collapsing ownership into mere permission.
The UK courts have not denied property rights in digital ledger entries. They have affirmed them. The law is clear: the ledger records rights; it does not dissolve them.
You undermine your case by pointing to the farce of AA v Persons Unknown. Judge Bryan ignored all legal precedent and referred to the opinion of the corrupt or inept UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, who set out with the same aims of Agencies in the US, to manipulate an outcome where the mass delusion that underpins crypto is stoked rather than extinguished. Property with no rights (otherwise it would be a thing in action)!? We have entered legal Twilight Zone territory. Consider Byran's toothless "order" to freeze the Bitcoin in question - hilarious! No, that case and the UKJT are pantomines that will be exposed under rigourous challenge.
Furthermore, your refutation of the correct reality, that users of a shared database system are merely licencees of the system, shows your misunderstanding of both law and fact. In the absence of any contractual rights being conferred, as with Bitcoin and most other crypto, the base case is that of licencee as per MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment (2010), with all rights vesting in the IP holder.
You are doing what polemicists always do when they lack law: you sneer at an authority, pretend it is “toothless”, and then replace it with a US videogame licence dispute as if that were a universal solvent.
AA v Persons Unknown is not “a farce”. It is a reasoned Chancery decision applying orthodox English concepts of property to a new factual substrate, and it does so in the only way the common law ever progresses: by taking established indicia of property and asking whether the asset in question satisfies them. The result was not judicial theatre; it was the recognition that a cryptoasset can be treated as property for the purposes of proprietary relief. That is exactly why it has been cited and relied upon, and exactly why litigants keep reaching for it when they want injunctions, disclosure orders, and the machinery of the court.
Bryan J did not “ignore all legal precedent”. He did what judges do: he applied it. The UKJT statement is not binding, but it is a careful synthesis of existing principles and a useful articulation of how those principles map onto digital assets. Courts are entitled to find such work persuasive, just as they routinely rely on Law Commission analyses, authoritative texts, and expert evidence to understand unfamiliar technical contexts. Calling that “corruption” is not an argument; it is just noise.
Your “toothless order” line confuses enforcement practicality with legal validity. Freezing and proprietary injunctions are not pantomime: they bind parties within the jurisdiction, they bite on intermediaries who hold or control relevant assets, and they trigger disclosure and contempt consequences when flouted. The fact that a defendant may attempt to evade an order does not reduce the order to comedy; it merely identifies the defendant as the kind of person for whom contempt proceedings were invented.
Your pivot to “users are merely licensees of a shared database system” collapses on contact with basics. First, MDY Industries v Blizzard (2010) is a Ninth Circuit case about breach of an end-user licence agreement and the boundary between contract breach and copyright infringement in the context of World of Warcraft. It is not an English property case, it is not a database rights case in the sense you are using, and it says nothing that decides whether ledger-based assets can be property under English law. Importing it here is category error dressed up as citation.
Second, the “all rights vest in the IP holder” trope fails because there is no single proprietary “IP holder” who owns the system in the way Blizzard owned its game. Open-source software is distributed under licence, yes, but that does not magically convert every economic interest represented and transferred using that software into the licensor’s property. If your position were right, every payment system would make its operator the owner of customers’ balances merely because the operator owns some code. That is not law; it is authoritarian wish-thinking.
Third, the absence of a bespoke bilateral contract with each participant does not entail “no rights”. English law recognises property interests, trusts, equitable obligations, and proprietary remedies without the need to invent a consumer-licence metaphysics for every new technology. The question is not whether you can force everything into a software EULA analogy; it is whether the asset exhibits the characteristics that make proprietary treatment coherent and workable. That is precisely what AA addressed, and that is why your attempt to wave it away reads like discomfort with the outcome rather than critique of the reasoning.
So, no: you have not shown that AA is wrong, that Bryan J ignored precedent, that the UKJT “manipulated” anything, or that MDY somehow determines English proprietary analysis of digital assets. You have shown only that, when the law does not flatter your narrative, you resort to insults and irrelevant American gaming cases.
I issued no insult, merely disputed your understanding, using the same words you issued to me. The matter of IP ownership of game assets is far from irrelevant, it is the crux of the matter. The default position regarding game assets, which is what so called cryptotokens are when analysed correctly, must be that users are implied licencees. No Court has ever heard this argument as pertaining to crypto as it is in nobody's interest to make it - unless you are Satoshi and want all the coins, or perhaps someone that is sick of all of the lies surrounding Bitcoin. I do not need to prove anything regarding AA - the written record shows that application of common law principles of property did not result in the outcome that the UKJT or Bryan wished, therefore they ignored both it and IP law. We will not come to agreement on this matter but it is interesting as always to hear your views.
This is not a matter of agreement. It is a matter of law.
The licence analysis you rely on only operates where there is a single IP owner running a closed system under contractual terms. That factual predicate does not exist here. There is no unitary rights-holder, no governing EULA, and no retained dominion over the assets by a software proprietor. Without those facts, the implied-licence framework simply does not engage.
English law does not default to “users are licensees” merely because software is involved. Property, bailment, and conversion turn on control, possession (actual or constructive), and obligation, not on IP ownership. That is why AA applies orthodox property principles and why IP law does no work on these facts.
I will not labour the point but your very narrow interpretation of when IP rights take effect is incorrect. There does not need to be any contractual terms as you claim. The base position is that the IP holder retains all rights to system assets, especially those that are produced automatically and not by any creative input by the system user. It is a fact that no Court has considered this because it has not been argued. The stretching and mangling of private property law to accommodate mass delusion is an abomination of law.
Your explication here brings to mind emails of your earlier UK court dealings wherein they were willing to acknowledge your *ahem* contributions to BitCoin, but only for purposes of holding you responsible for facilitating other's actions as progenitor of a system misused by the Other. ...
Nonsense. The UK Courts were simply getting close to the truth, that there are no personal property rights, or legal title, of individual entries within a database. Users of shared database systems are licencees at best. Such a declaration undermines the status quo of the cryptospace carefully constructed by corrupt agencies in the US declaring "property subject to taxation" and "commodity" decisions without technical or legal merit. UK Courts are not bound by such nonsense, hence the new law, rushed out to stop the Courts from revealing the truth. Let's see how it stacks up against intellectual property challenges, which will be the ultimate reveal.
Under UK law that comment is wrong in both principle and authority.
English law has long recognised property rights in intangibles where the law is capable of identifying the asset, the holder, and the enforceable rights attached to it. That position was made explicit, not denied, by the UK courts. The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts (2019) confirmed that cryptoassets are capable of being property under English law. That conclusion was adopted judicially in AA v Persons Unknown [2019] EWHC 3556 (Comm), where the High Court held that cryptoassets meet the classic Ainsworth criteria for property. The Court of Appeal reaffirmed the same approach in Ion Science Ltd v Persons Unknown [2020] EWHC (Comm), treating digital assets as property capable of proprietary injunctions.
The suggestion that users are merely “licensees of a shared database” misunderstands both law and fact. English law does not require tangibility or exclusivity in a physical sense. What matters is control, assignability, persistence, and enforceability against third parties. Cryptoassets satisfy those criteria precisely because the ledger records obligations and entitlements, not because it is “shared”. Bank deposits are recorded on shared ledgers. Securities are recorded on registries. Neither are reduced to bare licences.
The recent statutory intervention does not “stop courts revealing the truth”. The Law Commission’s work and the Property (Digital Assets etc.) legislation were introduced to remove residual uncertainty, not to negate property rights. Far from rejecting ownership, Parliament expressly recognised that digital objects can be personal property even where they do not fit historic categories of choses in possession or choses in action.
Nor is there any contradiction with taxation or commodity treatment. English law routinely recognises property interests for private law purposes while permitting different classifications for regulatory or tax analysis. That is not corruption; it is doctrinal separation. UK courts have never held that the absence of a physical bearer negates ownership.
Intellectual property challenges do not undermine this position. They reinforce it. Copyright, database rights, and confidential information all demonstrate that English law protects value embedded in information systems without collapsing ownership into mere permission.
The UK courts have not denied property rights in digital ledger entries. They have affirmed them. The law is clear: the ledger records rights; it does not dissolve them.
You undermine your case by pointing to the farce of AA v Persons Unknown. Judge Bryan ignored all legal precedent and referred to the opinion of the corrupt or inept UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, who set out with the same aims of Agencies in the US, to manipulate an outcome where the mass delusion that underpins crypto is stoked rather than extinguished. Property with no rights (otherwise it would be a thing in action)!? We have entered legal Twilight Zone territory. Consider Byran's toothless "order" to freeze the Bitcoin in question - hilarious! No, that case and the UKJT are pantomines that will be exposed under rigourous challenge.
Furthermore, your refutation of the correct reality, that users of a shared database system are merely licencees of the system, shows your misunderstanding of both law and fact. In the absence of any contractual rights being conferred, as with Bitcoin and most other crypto, the base case is that of licencee as per MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment (2010), with all rights vesting in the IP holder.
You are doing what polemicists always do when they lack law: you sneer at an authority, pretend it is “toothless”, and then replace it with a US videogame licence dispute as if that were a universal solvent.
AA v Persons Unknown is not “a farce”. It is a reasoned Chancery decision applying orthodox English concepts of property to a new factual substrate, and it does so in the only way the common law ever progresses: by taking established indicia of property and asking whether the asset in question satisfies them. The result was not judicial theatre; it was the recognition that a cryptoasset can be treated as property for the purposes of proprietary relief. That is exactly why it has been cited and relied upon, and exactly why litigants keep reaching for it when they want injunctions, disclosure orders, and the machinery of the court.
Bryan J did not “ignore all legal precedent”. He did what judges do: he applied it. The UKJT statement is not binding, but it is a careful synthesis of existing principles and a useful articulation of how those principles map onto digital assets. Courts are entitled to find such work persuasive, just as they routinely rely on Law Commission analyses, authoritative texts, and expert evidence to understand unfamiliar technical contexts. Calling that “corruption” is not an argument; it is just noise.
Your “toothless order” line confuses enforcement practicality with legal validity. Freezing and proprietary injunctions are not pantomime: they bind parties within the jurisdiction, they bite on intermediaries who hold or control relevant assets, and they trigger disclosure and contempt consequences when flouted. The fact that a defendant may attempt to evade an order does not reduce the order to comedy; it merely identifies the defendant as the kind of person for whom contempt proceedings were invented.
Your pivot to “users are merely licensees of a shared database system” collapses on contact with basics. First, MDY Industries v Blizzard (2010) is a Ninth Circuit case about breach of an end-user licence agreement and the boundary between contract breach and copyright infringement in the context of World of Warcraft. It is not an English property case, it is not a database rights case in the sense you are using, and it says nothing that decides whether ledger-based assets can be property under English law. Importing it here is category error dressed up as citation.
Second, the “all rights vest in the IP holder” trope fails because there is no single proprietary “IP holder” who owns the system in the way Blizzard owned its game. Open-source software is distributed under licence, yes, but that does not magically convert every economic interest represented and transferred using that software into the licensor’s property. If your position were right, every payment system would make its operator the owner of customers’ balances merely because the operator owns some code. That is not law; it is authoritarian wish-thinking.
Third, the absence of a bespoke bilateral contract with each participant does not entail “no rights”. English law recognises property interests, trusts, equitable obligations, and proprietary remedies without the need to invent a consumer-licence metaphysics for every new technology. The question is not whether you can force everything into a software EULA analogy; it is whether the asset exhibits the characteristics that make proprietary treatment coherent and workable. That is precisely what AA addressed, and that is why your attempt to wave it away reads like discomfort with the outcome rather than critique of the reasoning.
So, no: you have not shown that AA is wrong, that Bryan J ignored precedent, that the UKJT “manipulated” anything, or that MDY somehow determines English proprietary analysis of digital assets. You have shown only that, when the law does not flatter your narrative, you resort to insults and irrelevant American gaming cases.
I issued no insult, merely disputed your understanding, using the same words you issued to me. The matter of IP ownership of game assets is far from irrelevant, it is the crux of the matter. The default position regarding game assets, which is what so called cryptotokens are when analysed correctly, must be that users are implied licencees. No Court has ever heard this argument as pertaining to crypto as it is in nobody's interest to make it - unless you are Satoshi and want all the coins, or perhaps someone that is sick of all of the lies surrounding Bitcoin. I do not need to prove anything regarding AA - the written record shows that application of common law principles of property did not result in the outcome that the UKJT or Bryan wished, therefore they ignored both it and IP law. We will not come to agreement on this matter but it is interesting as always to hear your views.
This is not a matter of agreement. It is a matter of law.
The licence analysis you rely on only operates where there is a single IP owner running a closed system under contractual terms. That factual predicate does not exist here. There is no unitary rights-holder, no governing EULA, and no retained dominion over the assets by a software proprietor. Without those facts, the implied-licence framework simply does not engage.
English law does not default to “users are licensees” merely because software is involved. Property, bailment, and conversion turn on control, possession (actual or constructive), and obligation, not on IP ownership. That is why AA applies orthodox property principles and why IP law does no work on these facts.
You may disagree. The law does not.
I will not labour the point but your very narrow interpretation of when IP rights take effect is incorrect. There does not need to be any contractual terms as you claim. The base position is that the IP holder retains all rights to system assets, especially those that are produced automatically and not by any creative input by the system user. It is a fact that no Court has considered this because it has not been argued. The stretching and mangling of private property law to accommodate mass delusion is an abomination of law.