# Patent and trade-secret disputes are decided on when, not what.

Priority turns on the earliest date a claim can be shown to have existed, and reasonable measures to keep a secret is a statutory requirement. In both cases the question is when, and a blockchain-anchored hash answers it without revealing the work. immut anchors a SHA-256 fingerprint of your file to the XRP Ledger, creating court-admissible proof of prior creation accepted in 88 countries and 171 jurisdictions.

## What does the law require you to prove?

Every IP and trade-secret framework asks the same question: prove the document existed at this date, in this form, to a party that does not trust you.

- **AIA §135 (35 U.S.C. §135), derivation proceedings.** The petitioner must prove prior conception and communication by a preponderance of the evidence. The factual question at the heart of every derivation proceeding is creation date: who had the idea first, and what did they document at the time?
- **AIA §273 (35 U.S.C. §273), prior commercial use defence.** The defendant must prove commercial use at least one year before the earlier of the effective filing date or the date of public disclosure, to a clear and convincing evidence standard, one of the highest civil standards.
- **DTSA, 18 U.S.C. §1839(3), reasonable measures.** A trade secret is protectable only where the owner has taken reasonable measures to keep it secret. Systematic documentation of what is confidential and when it was created, without disclosing the content, constitutes a reasonable measure.
- **EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943, Art 2(1)(c) and Recital 14.** Requires reasonable steps under the circumstances. Recital 14 explicitly references appropriate technical measures, including marking documents as confidential.
- **Berne Convention, 179 countries, copyright.** Copyright exists at the moment of creation, without registration, and the burden of proving creation date is entirely on the rights holder. There is no registry that answers "who created this work and when" automatically.
- **FRE 902(13)/(14) and eIDAS Art 41, blockchain admissibility.** US Federal Rules of Evidence 902(13) and (14) provide for self-authentication of records generated by electronic processes producing accurate results. eIDAS Art 41(2) creates a legal presumption of accuracy for the date and integrity of a qualified electronic timestamp, binding across all 27 EU member states.

## Does immut replace a patent?

No. An honest line on patents: a private blockchain timestamp is not §102 prior art, because prior art requires public disclosure and immut keeps the file private. For the patent right itself, you still need to file. Where immut is directly relevant in the patent context is derivation proceedings (§135), prior commercial use defences (§273), evidence of the inventor's own pre-disclosure creation (§102(b)(1) grace period), and foreign filing licence date compliance (§184). These are not edge cases. They are the contested evidentiary questions in real patent disputes.

## Why isn't my existing documentation enough?

An authentic document and a backdated one are forensically identical. Invention records, lab notebooks, design files, and trade-secret inventories in Word, Google Docs, GitHub, and email are all editable. No court or PTAB examiner can tell the difference by inspecting the file.

- **Git histories:** can be rewritten with administrative access. Internal audit trails live in the same editable system they are meant to prove.
- **Email timestamps:** generated by the sending client and editable. Server logs may corroborate, but are under third-party control and subject to retention policies.
- **Cloud storage:** file timestamps show when a file was uploaded or modified, not when it was created, and are controlled by the same organisation being questioned.

## Which disputes turned on creation date evidence?

In every case below, the substance of the invention was not in question. The when of its creation was. Ninety-one percent of the most innovative products of the past few decades were not patented; for those, trade-secret law is the only protection available, and it requires contemporaneous evidence.

- **Superpharm v. Megapharm** (patent priority proceeding, patent lost): lab notebooks were found not to have been written when they claimed. The priority date was pushed back two months. The patent was lost not because the invention was invalid, but because the date could not be established.
- **Medichem v. Rolabo** (patent priority proceeding, priority lost): lab notebooks were found fraudulently backdated. Some were authentic, others were not, and no forensic method available to the court could distinguish between them from the documents alone.
- **Stern v. Columbia University** (inventorship dispute): notebooks were not contemporaneously witnessed as required for pre-AIA corroboration. The question was not whether the inventor had the idea, but whether the records credibly showed when.
- **Broad v. UC Berkeley (CRISPR)** (PTAB / Federal Circuit): a multi-billion-dollar dispute that turned on the credibility of lab notebook maintenance at two world-class institutions.
- **Global Health Solutions v. Selner** (§135 derivation proceeding): email timestamps were accepted only as corroboration, not primary proof. The court noted email metadata is generated by the sending client and editable, the weakest evidentiary category.

## Which industries does this apply to?

Every industry has IP, and every industry has a when problem: software and SaaS (source code, algorithms), fashion and design (the first European court to accept blockchain timestamps did so in a fashion IP case), creative and media, AI and machine learning (models, training data, human authorship), biotech and pharma (courts have already rejected unsigned notebooks as evidence), universities and research, manufacturing and hardware (CAD files, process innovations), and architecture and engineering (BIM models, drawings).

## How does immut work?

The hash is public. The work stays private. A SHA-256 hash is a one-way fingerprint: given the hash, no-one can reconstruct the original file; given the file, anyone can verify the hash matches. The blockchain record proves existence and date without revealing the invention, the trade secret, or the original work.

1. **Only the hash is recorded.** immut generates a SHA-256 fingerprint of your file. Invention disclosures, lab notebooks, and trade-secret records are not stored by immut.
2. **Hash anchored to the XRP Ledger.** Written to the public XRP Ledger at the moment you create the record. Once written, no party can alter or delete it.
3. **Certificate issued immediately.** A court-ready certificate contains the hash, XRPL transaction ID, ledger sequence number, and UTC timestamp.
4. **Proof outlives immut.** The record lives on a public blockchain and remains verifiable even if immut ceased to exist.

## Do courts accept this kind of evidence?

88 countries, 171 jurisdictions, already accepted.

- **United States, US v. Sterlingov (2024):** the US District Court for DC admitted blockchain transaction records as primary evidence, without requiring expert testimony.
- **European Union, EU Regulation 2025/2531 (eIDAS-2):** qualified electronic time-stamps have the legal effect of evidence of the date and integrity of the data, across all 27 Member States.
- **France, AZ Factory v. Valeria Moda (2025, Tribunal Judiciaire de Marseille):** a blockchain timestamp was accepted as standalone proof of copyright priority, preferred over a traditional bailiff certification, and recognised by EUIPO as a landmark precedent.
- **China, Supreme People's Court (2018):** blockchain-stored evidence is presumptively authentic. Over 1,430 IP cases have since been decided on blockchain-anchored evidence, including 1,191 copyright cases.

## The question to ask yourself

If a competitor filed a patent on your idea next month and claimed priority, what would you produce?

## Where can I learn more?

- Live page: https://www.immut.io/evidence/ip
- Developer docs: https://www.immut.io/docs
- For AI agents: https://www.immut.io/ai-agents