The case has persisted since April 9, 2007. After Odyssey announced in 2007 it had found the sunken treasure, it quickly laid claim to the coins, put them in crates and said it flew them to a discreet, well-guarded location in the United States.

Spain soon filed suit in a federal court in Tampa, Florida, also claiming the treasure.

Spain says its navy warship Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes was carrying the coins. The Mercedes, a 34-gun frigate, left Peru in 1804 and crossed the Atlantic to within a day's sail from Spain when British ships attacked the Spanish fleet.

The federal court in Tampa in 2009 ruled in favor of Spain's claim to the treasure, but Odyssey took the case to the federal appeals court in Atlanta, which ruled last September to uphold the lower court's ruling.

At the end of that 53-page ruling, the three-judge appeals panel wrote, "For the foregoing reasons, the district court did not err when it ordered Odyssey to release the recovered" items to the custody of Spain, according to a copy of the order viewed by CNN.

Last September, the federal circuit court of appeals upheld the lower district court’s decision that ordered Odyssey “to release the recovered res [i.e. the shipwreck materials] to the custody of Spain.”

Odyssey hoped to stay this decision as it appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The company argued in its December 2, 2011 petition to the circuit court that once it delivered materials to Spain the objects would not be returned to Odyssey if the salvor ultimately won the case in the highest court in the land.

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