Features
Proving the prior existence of your creations in court
A piece of evidence only has value before a judge. Here is what French law admits, and what makes a certificate hard to challenge.
Evidentiary value
What the law says, and what holds up in court.
Except where the law states otherwise, evidence may be produced by any means.
Article 1358 of the French Civil Code
Evidence is unrestricted in civil matters
Article 1358 of the French Civil Code provides that, except where the law states otherwise, evidence may be produced by any means. A timestamped certificate is therefore admissible: the judge assesses its weight based on its technical reliability.
What makes a certificate hard to challenge
Fingerprint, independent timestamping, tamper-proof registry: the mechanics are detailed in "Securing your creations." What matters before a judge is that each of these three elements can be verified by a third party, without ever having to take our word for it.
From evidence file to litigation
Because it was built up as the creation took shape, the case file comes together in a few clicks — before litigation as much as during it. The debate stops being about "who created it" and shifts to the harm suffered: that's where cases are won.
→Unrestricted evidence in civil matters — Art. 1358 of the French Civil Code
→Timestamping secured by an independent third party
→Tamper-proof registry, public verification without an account
→Enforceable PDF certificate, downloadable at any time
Judicial assessment
How a court evaluates timestamped evidence
A digital certificate is assessed like any electronic evidence, against three criteria. Knowing them means building a case file that answers them in advance.
Authenticity and integrity
The judge first checks that the record has not been altered — that's the whole point of the cryptographic fingerprint mentioned above: the slightest alteration to the file immediately makes it inconsistent with the certificate.
Reliability of the process
The judge then examines the mechanism itself: who applies the date, under what standard, with what traceability. Timestamping issued by a recognized independent provider and anchoring on a proven public registry meet this requirement better than a private database.
Link to the dispute
A certificate is only valid when tied to a party and a subject. The certificate must link the fingerprint, the date and the depositor's identity to the claimed creation — it's this link, more than the technology, that makes the difference at the hearing.
Overview
Legal recognition, jurisdiction by jurisdiction
Texts and rulings that today give evidentiary value to an electronic timestamp or to anchoring on a distributed registry.
France
In a fashion design case, the Marseille Judicial Court accepted a secure digital timestamp as proof of prior existence in copyright law, relying on the record rather than the date of a traditional bailiff's report. A European first, consistent with the freedom of evidence set out in Article 1358 of the Civil Code.
European Union
EU law prohibits denying the admissibility of an electronic timestamp on the sole ground that it is in electronic form. The 2024 revision extends this to electronic registries.
Italy
Article 8-ter grants distributed-registry timestamps the same legal effect as a recognized electronic timestamp at European level — one of the first comprehensive national frameworks on the matter.
China
The Hangzhou Internet Court was the first jurisdiction to admit digital timestamp evidence in an infringement case, a position endorsed the same year by the Supreme People's Court for all Internet courts.
United States
Since 2017, the Federal Rules of Evidence have allowed self-authentication of electronic records, with rule 902(14) specifically covering data identified by a cryptographic fingerprint — exactly what a certificate produces.
Germany & United Kingdom
Both countries apply their general frameworks to digital evidence (§ 371a ZPO in Germany), with case law specific to digital assets and registries still being built.
Arguing the case
Presenting the evidence at the hearing
Three reflexes our partner lawyers apply systematically.
Most judges are not technicians. The fingerprint is explained as a digital fingerprint of the file; the registry, as a public log that no one can rewrite. The Ipocamp certificate includes a summary written to be understood without technical expertise.
A qualified timestamping authority and a long-established, widely replicated public registry carry more weight than a proprietary solution: reliability is judged by track record and by the independence of the process.
The certificate proves existence and integrity at a given date. It combines usefully with correspondence, metadata and internal documents that tell the story of the creation's context and ownership.
Sources
Verify rather than take our word for it
The texts this page relies on. Ipocamp is not a party to any of them and none of them certifies Ipocamp; no certificate guarantees the outcome of proceedings.