Potential applications

Application Scenarios

	Intellectual property protection
	E-commerce (B2C)
	E-commerce (B2B)

Intellectual property protection

Joe Yeung is a designer of S & E Toys Company. He is a good designer and has designed many popular toys. Joe used to work alone on his computer and saved the designs as soft copies. He seldom revealed the designs before they were completed so that other people could not steal his designs. However, this method did not work…

One day, when Joe was strolling around in a toy exhibition, he was shocked to see a toy car that was similar to his unfinished design showing in Redcar Toys Company's stall. He suspected that Redcar Toys Company had stolen his design, so he bought the toy car for investigation.

After detailed inspection, Joe believed that Redcar Toys Company did steal his design because the interior and function designs of the toy car were exactly the same as his. He went to a lawyer with the toy car and a copy of his design and asked for advice. After Joe finished his story, the lawyer asked him for the witness and evidence of his design. Joe told him that he had no witness but he had the soft copy of the design with date and time as evidence. But the lawyer pointed out that the soft copy with date and time cannot be evidence because the date and time on the computer could be changed manually. The lawyer asked Joe to go to a notary whenever he designed something. But Joe thought that it was impractical because it was too expensive and inconvenient. Then the lawyer advised John to let other people to see his designs so that he could have witnesses.

Joe followed the lawyer's advice and began to share his designs with Mark, his friend. Unfortunately, Mark was not a sincere friend. After three months, Joe found out that his new robot design, which had been shown to Mark, was produced by another toy company. Joe was very upset and did not know what to do. Were there any effective ways to protect copyrights?

Then Joe heard about Electronic Time-Stamping. He went to www.e-timestamping.com to try the timestamping service. He found it so easy and effective-he just has to press a few buttons to timestamp his designs at the end of each day. This Internet witness will not peep into the contents of his design, but he can still get strong proofs of his ownership of the designs. Now all designers working in S & E Toys Company use Electronic Time-Stamping to protect their intellectual properties.

To try Electronic Time-Stamping yourself, click here.