The Bitfury Group today announced a new partnership with PatentBot to use blockchain to digitally timestamp copyright documents, providing a secure and permanent way to prove authorship and protect intellection property.
PatentBot is a bot-registrar of trademarks, which can reduce the time it takes to file documents to less than 10 minutes. The integration of blockchain into its services will help streamline and secure the complicated copyright system. To obtain a copyright, creators must prove their primacy in bringing the idea to life and that they have a verifiable record of the date and content of the work.
“As early as the 18th century, authors sent pieces of their work to themselves by post. Paradoxical as it may seem, this method is still used today. Sending a letter to yourself can be described by the classic term of stamping. In itself, the seal of the post office specifying the time serves as a proof of creation of a piece of work at the particular time. The letter was opened in court in case of a dispute. We decided to fulfill this task using blockchain technology, and we are pleased to be working with Bitufry on this important project.”
With blockchain integration, users can prove authorship of content without the need to print out letters, go to the post office, pay a postage fee, send an envelope and store it safely. Users will instead upload their content to PatentBot’s blockchain-based platform, thereby creating a verifiable digital timestamp that serves as proof that the user owned that content as a certain point in time. By using blockchain, this information is secure and easily auditable in the case of legal disputes.
“After sending a file, you will receive it back in an encrypted form with a mark that indicates the encryption time. After that, you will get a key that can open this file. In other words, you have a re-usable digital envelope, which allows you to prove your authorship in a system that is resistant to hacking. And in the case of dispute in the future, you can refer to this record.”
PatentBot will use Bitfury’s Exonum blockchain framework to deploy the solution.
“We completed a smooth integration of Exonum with PatentBot’s sensitive user data, ensuring the utmost security and immutability of data. Records on the blockchain are easily accessible and can be used in the courts as verifiable facts. With Exonom, anyone who plays a role in copyright registration, from law agencies, to regulators, to private people or enterprises – can easily fulfill their requirements and benefit from the easy and smooth implementation of time stamping.”