Despite major technological advances, people still rely on certification documents printed on paper for legal, business, and artistic matters. Security issues in new technologies discourage documents authentication and broader digital adoption. In fact, present technology processes are usually so complicated that they delay valid commercial and legal transactions.
With internet broader adoption, artistic productions, patents and digital documents are suffering even more scams, counterfeits, piracy and plagiarism than in the past. Just think about how the digital audio peer-to-peer file sharing services or photographs published on the web do not usually respect the copyrights. Along with several gaps in the law, unauthorized file sharing and the unlawful use of copyrighted content are a significant problem to date.
With regard to patents, there are various barriers to legal enforcement, including data security issues and privacy concerns. Furthermore, once the patent is issued, the buyer must register ownership with the relevant Patent Office, but the required documentation and the deadlines for doing so can vary greatly from one country to another. The patent registration transfer from different countries can be very expensive in terms of time and money.
There are also strict rules on new patent appliants. For example, when a patent is required the invention must show an element of novelty. The presentation of a patent requires a detailed description of the invention to prevent the replication of the project by a third person.
Considering all these critical issues, how can we show that a digital resource (piece of music, commercial contract or legal document) has been certified (signed) by an authorized organization or a government institution? And secondly, how anyone from all over the world can verify the authenticity of a particular digital asset without having to rely on a third party or an intermediary?
Thankfully, the Blockchain can solve many of the problems already highlighted. Permissionless Blockchains are open source ledgers accessible to everyone. They can act as a tamper-proof intellectual property deposit. In addition to keeping the invention safe, the blockchain could also be used to track ownership of digital assets using public-key cryptography. Patents can be stored on the blockchain and transmitted securely. In addition to providing complete control of the intellectual property to the inventor, it also ensures that the data can not be manipulated.
Blockchain technology offers noticeable possibilities for protection and registration of intellectual property (IP) and can act as evidence both in registration and in court. It also promises an economic way to accelerate these processes.
In summary, the possible use cases include: proof of creation and authentication of origin, registration of intellectual property rights; control and tracking of the distribution of an IP (not) registered; proof of genuine and / or first use in commerce; digital rights management (eg online music sites); establish and enforce agreements, licenses or exclusive distribution networks through smart contracts and transmission of payments in real time to IP owners.
Scrypta and data certification
Thanks to Scrypta’s blockchain, it is possible to store documents as supporting evidence during legal disputes that unequivocally demonstrate ownership of a work or document. There are three features that make Scrypta particularly relevant for the certification system: “Hashing”, “Proof of Existence” and IPFS (Interplanetary File System). Hashing is a process by which a document is transformed into a fixed length code that is defined with a fingerprint. Every hash is unique. “Proof of Existence” shows that a certain hash existed at a given time. Demonstrating its existence means providing proof that a single document existed at a fixed time: this process is called “timestamping”. The IPFS system is a peer-to-peer protocol in which each node stores a set of hash files. A client that wants to retrieve one of these files only needs to call the hash of the desired file.
Proof of Existence
Proof of existence (PoE) is a useful tool when it comes to handle public evidence and authenticity of any document.
Proof of Existence takes the data hash and stores it in the Blockchain. Because Blockchain stores all the confirmed transactions and all the hashes are unique, once the transaction is confirmed it can be recalled again to show that that particular document exists.
Through a reliable registration and “timestamping” process in the Blockchain (a timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information that identifies when a specific event occurs, usually giving date and time of day), PoE allows anyone to store anonymously and securely the proof of online distributed existence for any document.
In traditional PoE, documents are not stored in the Blockchain: only file cryptographic “digest” is stored and it is linked to the moment the document was sent. Therefore, security is entirely at the user’s expense with high probability of data loss. The Scrypta system, on the other hand, implements IPFS technology, a data sharing system that can be utilised to store more efficiently and permanently and which additionally allows the sharing of large files.
Hashing
Using the hash function, which is a type of mathematical function that transforms the original data into a fingerprint called “hash”, an author or any rights owner can obtain a unambiguous summary of his/her copyrighted works. The hash function forms the basis for the security and immutability of the blockchain. This hash will distinguish one copyrighted work from another. While doing a transaction of a copyrighted work, a hash of that file is included in the transaction and once verified in accordance with the blockchain protocol, the transaction becomes timestamped and its content is encoded on the blockchain. As a result, copyright ownership information and its subsequent changes are integrated into a blockchain and can not be counterfeited. Consequently, the ownership records of a copyrighted work could be immutably reflected in the blockchain database and then easily verifiable by any interested person.
The main purpose of a fingerprint is to act as an instrument for exclusion from liability for intermediaries or for the policy of a particular online platform and its infrastructure where the terms of use can be changed unilaterally at any time. This is the inevitable price of centralization. The Blockchain instead, offers a solution based on the decentralization principle: there is no dependency on particular providers and the terms of use can be incorporated into the code. Changing those terms of use would require a consensus among the majority of users.
InterPlanetary File System
IPFS allows the distributed storage of data and is immune to alteration and falsification. Data stored on the IPFS network can not be changed without changing the data identifier. In IPFS, the identifier is a cryptographic hash. You may think it is similar to BitTorrent. It is a decentralized storage mode but offers greater control and refers to files by hashes, allowing much richer programmatic interactions.
Scrypta aims to be a resource for all processes related to intellectual property and certifications.
This is not just an idea: Scrypta has developed a new platform which, in addition to traditional activities, offers new use cases that would not be possible without blockchain.
Everyone can understand how crucial the use of blockchain technology will be in the near future, offering a reliable and transparent system as well as an effective action to fight illegal activities and even more an adequate form of protection of the authenticity of products.
SCRYPTA - Archiving and VerificationWebsite: www.scryptachain.org
Scrypta Masternodes Platform: https://masternodes.scryptachain.org
Block Explorer: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/lyra
Official Github: https://github.com/scryptachain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scryptachain
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e-mail: info@scryptachain.org
