Month: March 2023

Introduction: 

Bell Yard Communications is a small, respected PR agency focusing on litigation PR and PR for businesses and individuals in the legal sector. 

Founded in 2002 by Director, Melanie Riley, the agency built its name representing high-profile clients in times of civil dispute, criminal prosecution or regulatory investigation. These days, Bell Yard consultants are as well-known and valued as communications advisers to the legal community, providing day-to-day strategic counsel to partners, law firms and chambers alike.   

The agency’s output defies its size.  It values its highly collegiate, meritocratic atmosphere and flexible, non-hierarchical structure.   

The Role:

Bell Yard is seeking an experienced PR consultant to advise clients in the legal community on their profile-raising communications programmes and sensitive reputational matters.  Ideally a full-time position, but applicants seeking to work 4 days per week would also be considered. 

The chosen candidate will join a close-knit, friendly, supportive and busy team and will be exposed to a combination of challenging, but always interesting, assignments.   The candidate will primarily report to one existing senior team member, though ultimately to the agency’s Director.   The candidate will support this senior consultant on their existing retained accounts, and work with the agency on securing new business opportunities.  The candidate, in turn, will be supported by the very able Office Manager/Client Service Executive.

The post holder would work on a mixture of consumer- and B2B- facing PR programmes for Bell Yard’s retained law firm accounts.

The primary focus of the role is traditional media relations, although there would be social media work and other PR-related tasks too. 

Responsibilities:

• Client Management: implementing communications strategies and PR plans for clients seeking to raise their profile in international, broadcast, domestic, trade, lifestyle magazines and social media environments.    Daily engagement with clients ensuring continuous provision of professional, intelligent, considered and timely communications support.  

• Client Administration: responsible for the provision of monthly and annual reporting of PR activity to clients as well as overseeing the management of press lists, and attending and reporting on client meetings and media interviews.

• Marketing Responsibilities as part of the team, identifying creative subject matter for blogging on the company’s website, and exploiting that content via social media channels.

• New Business Development: working with colleagues to identify appropriate, targeted new business opportunities and to assist with research in preparation for agency pitches to convert these potential opportunities into new clients.

• Business Networking: including regular engagement with, or attendance at events involving lawyers, barristers and intermediaries as well as with journalists key to the sectors in which our clients operate.

Potential Opportunities:

• Litigation PR Support: assisting the Director with litigation PR mandates as demand requires.
• Crisis comms: supporting the team with these instructions.

Requirements:

• Only assured, experienced, eloquent, organised, efficient and professional individuals, who would instantly inspire client confidence, need apply
• At least 3 years’ prior experience in legal/professional services communications is a pre-requisite, and a working understanding of the financial services industry is desirable
• Innate ‘news’ sense is a must, as is the tenacity, confidence and creativity to place stories -sometimes despite the most challenging of briefs 
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills are essential
• Candidate must be a team player able to fit within the close-knit, down-to-earth and collaborative culture of our small agency
• Flexibility, reliability, self-motivation, discretion and trustworthiness are crucial
• Strong IT and social media skills are important    
• A positive outlook and calm demeanour when under pressure is key.

T&C

• Hours: Full time
• Salary:  Depending on experience 
• 2 references to be supplied on request. 

The role is open to all who have a right to work in the UK.  Applications, submitted in confidence, should take the form of a CV and cover letter to be addressed to Melanie Riley, Bell Yard Communications (Melanie@bell-yard.com).   

Dr Craig Wright, together with two of his associated companies, Wright International Investments Limited (WII) and Wright International Investments UK Limited (WIIUK), have filed and served a claim for infringement of database rights and copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper against all 26 individuals and entities involved in the promotion, development and use of Bitcoin Core (BTC).  

The Claimants assert that the Defendants in this claim have been developing, promoting, funding, trading – and encouraging investors and consumers to trade and invest in – digital cash known as BTC (Bitcoin Core), whilst throughout infringing the Claimants’ intellectual property rights in both the White Paper and the Bitcoin Blockchain on which these digital assets are based.

Dr Wright devised the Bitcoin System and issued the White Paper under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” on 31 October 2008.  A number of the Defendants to these proceedings proposed significant changes to the Bitcoin System in 2016, which deviated from the protocols as set out in the Bitcoin White Paper.  On 1 August 2017, the BTC Network was created without the authorisation of the Claimants.

By participating in the operation of the BTC Network, it is the Claimants’ case that the Defendants have infringed the Claimants’ Database right which subsists in the Bitcoin Blockchain and infringed Dr Wright’s copyright which subsists in the Bitcoin White Paper by copying Block 230,009 in the Bitcoin Blockchain whilst making copies of the BTC Blockchain. 

According to Dr Wright, the only digital asset that implements the protocols as set out in the Bitcoin White Paper is “Bitcoin Satoshi Vision” (BSV).   

The Claimants seek an injunction restraining the Defendants from continuing to develop and/or participate in the promotion of BTC.  The Claimants also seek a declaration from the Court that database rights subsist in the Bitcoin Blockchain and that copyright subsists in the Bitcoin White Paper and that Dr Wright is the owner of it.  

Damon Parker of Harcus Parker, leading this claim on behalf of the Claimants, said:

“At its heart, this litigation is straightforward, in so far as it represents a claim for breach of database rights and copyright in the White Paper.   

“My clients simply assert their rights to the intellectual property underpinning Bitcoin.  For the digital asset market to gain widespread credibility, users need confidence in a sustainable digital currency underpinned by enforceable laws and regulation. This claim, in parallel with other claims brought by my clients, may prove a step in the right direction.” 

ENDS 

Issued on behalf of HARCUS PARKER by: 

Bell Yard Communications       BellYard@bell-yard.com            +44 (0) 20 7936 2021

Louise Beeson                         Louise@bell-yard.com               + 44 (0) 7768 956997

NOTES TO EDITORS

Dr Wright, WII and WIIUK are advised by Harcus Parker Partner, Damon Parker, alongside Associates, Olivier Altmeyer and Brad Pistorius.

If successful, the claim is likely to be worth several hundred billions of pounds when an inquiry into the full account of profits is undertaken by expert witnesses to the Court.

At a hearing on 3 February 2023, permission was granted by Mr Justice Mellor for the Claimants to serve the Defendants out of this jurisdiction, concurring there is an arguable case for the database claim.  Defendants are known to be based in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK.  The Claimants are seeking permission to appeal a judgment of Mr Justice Mellor in which he declined to allow a claim in relation to copyright in the Bitcoin file format to proceed.  

Bitcoin (BSV) is the fastest, most scalable environmentally-efficient and regulation-friendly public ledger that exists whilst remaining fixed to Dr Wright’s original protocol.  Dr Wright is concerned to ensure that no other digital asset improperly advances itself on the basis of unauthorised use of his substantial intellectual creativity, skill and labour over decades.

Dr Wright was involuntarily outed as Satoshi Nakamoto by Wired magazine in December 2015. Since then, he has faced unprecedented levels of harassment and disparagement by those who have a vested interest in supporting BTC and BCH.

In response to this persistent and pervasive abuse both online and in print, Dr Wright has sought to uphold his and his associated entities’ rights to protect their intellectual property in the Bitcoin eco-system, as well as his reputation as the creator of Bitcoin.  

As a result, there is a series of pending legal claims issued by lawyers across jurisdictions on behalf of Dr Wright and his associated entities which include:  

• Tulip Trading Ltd, a trust beneficially owned by Dr Wright has been granted permission by the English Court of Appeal to bring an action against developers of the BTC network to restore the Trust’s access to Bitcoin stored in an encrypted private wallet that was stolen in a hack on Dr Wright’s computers in 2019.
• Dr Wright and companies owned by him last year issued passing off claims in the High Court against exchanges Kraken and Coinbase.
• Dr Wright is bringing a defence to the Crypto Open Patent Alliance’s (COPA) challenge to his authorship of the White Paper, which will be heard in the High Court in early 2024.
• In May 2023, the High Court in London will hear Dr Wright’s defamation claim against digital currency enthusiast, Mr Magnus Granath, in England.  
• In September 2023, the Court of Appeal in Oslo will hear Dr Wright’s appeal of the November 2022 judgment that determined Mr Granath’s campaign of disparagement of Dr Wright through social media was not defamatory under Norwegian law. 
• In 2022 the London High Court found that podcaster Peter McCormack had defamed Dr Wright – the costs awarded are currently being appealed.
• In 2021 Dr Wright, successfully brought a copyright claim against the anonymous digital currency enthusiast operating under the pseudonym “Cøbra”. Enforcement of this judgment is ongoing, with the court recently concurring with Dr Wright that no individual can take part in proceedings for detailed assessment of costs whilst declining to inform the court of their identity.

In addition, in December 2021 Dr Wright successfully defended a claim brought in Florida, USA, by Ira Kleiman, brother of Wright’s late friend Dave Kleiman, who predicated the claim on the fact that Dr Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, but that Wright created Bitcoin with the help of Dave Kleiman.  The jury rejected that allegation.

London, 14 March 2023

Contact Bell Yard today

The BBC/Gary Lineker crisis was avoidable in more ways than one. 

The saga hardly needs recapping such is the attention it has attracted in recent days. But in short, when the   Match of the Day presenter compared the rhetoric used by the Government in its rollout of an anti-immigration bill to that of 1930s Germany, he found himself in hot water.

There was an outcry from those who disagreed with his language. There was consternation from BBC bosses that he had crossed a line by compromising its impartiality. Yet various colleagues supported his right to free speech, especially since he is not a news & current affairs journalist nor BBC employee. The BBC’s decision to take Lineker off air left Saturday night’s favourite sports programme in chaos when its whole presenting team refused to appear. Many predicted as inevitable DG Tim Davie’s subsequent climb down, but what could the BBC have done differently to avoid this crisis brewing out of control?

Consistency is key:

The approach taken in this instance seemed at odds with the (lack of) treatment meted out to others at the BBC taking an overtly political stance online (see below).  The guidelines seem poorly drafted, poorly communicated and, historically, inconsistently applied, lending weight to the Lineker support camp.  If BBC managerial consistency starts now – requiring new emphasis and implementation – they first have to game the consequences of the situation, and only then place a marker and stand their ground, or risk having rings run round their decisions.  The broadcaster’s history is littered with BBC insiders talking publicly about their management’s shortcomings – so the Lineker problem was never going to be resolved quietly once his suspension was announced. 

Suspend now and investigate later:

By going for the ‘suspend now investigate later’ approach, BBC bosses exacerbated the situation. It turned a saga into a circus that dominated public discourse and put the BBC under massive scrutiny for several days. Perhaps swifter decision-making would have prevented the situation from snowballing as it did. 

Anticipation leads to the best cure:

Clearer social media guidance for contracting presenters would have left no room for ambiguity. There had been earlier situations (for example Lord Sugar criticising transport union boss Mick Lynch over recent strike action) which had already exposed high-profile presenters’ expressions of personal political views as a tricky grey area. That the BBC’s social media policy will now be subject to independent review does demonstrate action (though clearly after the horse nearly bolted). 

Choose your battles wisely:

Lineker’s fierce army of fans (personified by his 8.8 million Twitter followers), put him in a category above and beyond the popularity of other BBC staffers. He would be an attractive talent for other sports channels. Despite rumours in some quarters that he regretted his extreme language and had admitted privately that he had perhaps gone too far, he has immense power (enhanced by his privilege of hosting a flagship BBC programme). He put to the test the widespread football notion of no player being bigger than their club. His criticism of a Government already unpopular among much of the Twitterati was likely to receive a mainly positive reaction on that particular platform.  However, the general furore is simply further recognition that the media like nothing better than a drama involving one of their own – early acknowledgement of which might have helped the BBC realise this was never going to play out discreetly.

Conclusion:

Whilst the crisis appears to have abated with soothing and mutually respectful statements from both sides, this peace is fragile. All Lineker’s future tweets will be pored over by media and commentators looking to reignite the issue. Let’s face it, he has already, seemingly purposefully, given them new fodder.  It strikes us that both sides have emerged with reputations somewhat tarnished.

Savvy BBC observers await the untreatable lesions to appear in this relationship, given a mere sticking plaster has been administered to an already festering wound. What are the sporting odds on which will come first: Lineker forced into issuing an unreserved apology for his social media antics and resigning or the end of Chairman Sharp and/or DG Davie’s respective tenures?  Reputations linger despite a spotlight that fades.

By Declan Flahive

16/03/2023