Timestamping of Prior Art System - Summary

This group is not part of the GNU Project.

In the future software patents will become a larger problem. One of the things that can invalidate a patent is prior art. There is no doubt that Savannah will contain stuff that can be used as prior art. Also there is a risk that some Savannah users may be sued injusticely simple because they seem to infringe a patent but where the Savannah user has prior art.
<P>
So what we need to do is to be able to prove in court that the given file in CVS <I>did</i> exist at a given point in time. Here is a simple way to do that:
<UL>
<LI> compute md5sums for all files for each project
<LI> put the md5sums for each project into a file called a ToPAS project file
<LI> compute md5sums for all ToPAS project files
<LI> put the md5sums for all ToPAS project files in a file called a ToPAS total file
<LI> publish the md5sum of the ToPAS total file in a printed newspaper (e.g. a free-ads paper)
<LI> store the ToPAS total file and the ToPAS project files for future use on ToPAS's website.
</ul>
This should be done periodically (once a month will probably be sufficient).
<P>
With the published md5sum it should be possible to prove in court that the ToPAS total file did indeed exist at the time of publishing. And with the ToPAS total file it should be possible to prove in court that  a given ToPAS project file did indeed exist at the time of publishing. And with the given ToPAS project file it should be possible to prove in court that the file in question did indeed exist before the time of publishing.
<P>
MD5sum is chosen instead of digital signatures as:
<UL>
<LI> it is fairly simple to explain the principle to a judge
<LI> MD5 is fairly known and respected so an expert wittness that will testify that you cannot fake an MD5-sum should be possible to find in your vicinity
</ul>
The files in the ToPAS-project will consist of dated ToPAS-files with record of where their MD5-sum was published.

Registration Date: Thu 05 Sep 2002 09:33:33 PM UTC
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
Development Status: 3 - Alpha