PriorMark creates a tamper-proof record of your intellectual property at a specific point in time. When you submit, a cryptographic fingerprint (SHA-3/512 hash) of your content is computed in your browser and written to the Hedera public ledger — a distributed network that records your submission with an immutable timestamp. That timestamp is your priority date: permanent, independently verifiable evidence that you possessed specific IP at a specific moment.

No. A PriorMark submission does not grant exclusive rights to make, use, or sell an invention — only a granted patent provides that protection. Most countries operate under a first-to-file patent system, meaning filing a patent application is the only way to secure exclusive rights. What PriorMark gives you is a dated record of prior conception and possession — which can support inventorship disputes, trade secret claims, and prior art challenges against later-filed patents.

A provisional patent application gives you 12 months of “patent pending” status and establishes a priority date in the US patent system — but it eventually becomes public, and it lapses if you don't follow up with a non-provisional application within that window.

A PriorMark submission costs a fraction of a provisional, never becomes public, and remains valid indefinitely. It doesn't grant patent rights, but it establishes a dated record that can serve as prior art or support inventorship disputes. You can still file a patent later — and your PriorMark record will predate anything filed after it.

Yes. The Hedera ledger is a global, public record. Under the European Patent Convention and Chinese patent law, a prior public disclosure can invalidate a later-filed patent for lack of novelty. In the US, 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) explicitly covers prior art that is “otherwise available to the public.”

Courts in France and China have already accepted blockchain timestamps as valid prior art evidence in IP disputes.

Only the hash — not your content. A SHA-3/512 hash is a fixed-length fingerprint of your submission. It proves you possessed specific content at a specific time without revealing what that content is. Unless you choose to disclose your idea, no one can learn anything about your IP from the ledger entry.

A cryptographic hash is a one-way mathematical function: it converts any input — a paragraph, a PDF, a dataset — into a fixed-length string of characters. The same input always produces the same hash. Change one character in your input and the hash changes completely.

Because it's one-way, you cannot reverse the process to recover the original content from the hash alone. This makes it ideal for proving you possessed something without revealing what it was — and for verifying, later, that a document matches a sealed record exactly.

Hedera is a public distributed ledger governed by a council of major independent organizations. It uses the hashgraph consensus algorithm, which is faster and more energy-efficient than proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin, and has a more predictable fee structure than Ethereum.

Most importantly for evidentiary purposes: Hedera provides millisecond-precision consensus timestamps with network-level fairness guarantees — the timestamp is assigned by the network itself, not by any single party. That makes it significantly harder to dispute in a legal proceeding.

Both tiers record the same SHA-3/512 fingerprint on the Hedera ledger and establish the same priority date.

Proof of Priority

Your files are fingerprinted locally in your browser and never uploaded. You receive a ledger record with your hash and timestamp. To verify later, you produce the original files yourself — they are not stored with us.

Proof + Secure Storage

After fingerprinting, your files are encrypted with AES-256-GCM in your browser before upload. We store only the encrypted ciphertext — your decryption key never leaves your hands. You can download your encrypted files at any time and decrypt them locally with your key.

Proof of Priority

No. Your files are fingerprinted locally and never sent to our servers. We receive only the hash.

Proof + Secure Storage

We store only the encrypted ciphertext — encryption happens in your browser before any files reach our servers. Your decryption key never leaves your device and we have no copy of it. We cannot read your content; only you can decrypt it using the key you hold.

No. SHA-3/512 is a one-way function — there is no known mathematical technique to reconstruct the input from the hash output. An attacker would need to already possess the content, hash it, and compare — which means they'd need the idea first. The ledger entry reveals only that something was submitted at a timestamp, not what it contained.

Content submitted under Proof + Secure Storage is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it leaves your browser. AES-256-GCM is the same standard used by governments and financial institutions for protecting sensitive data. Fingerprinting uses SHA-3/512, the NIST-standardized successor to SHA-2.

Potentially, yes — if your submission predates the patent's priority date and your content is, or can become, publicly accessible. Under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1), prior art includes anything “otherwise available to the public” before a patent's effective filing date. A ledger record of a publicly accessible disclosure that predates the patent's priority date can support Inter Partes Review (IPR), reexamination, or invalidity arguments in litigation.

For private (encrypted) submissions, you would need to produce and disclose the original content to make a prior art argument. Consult a patent attorney before initiating any IPR or invalidity proceeding.

35 U.S.C. § 273 provides a personal defense against patent infringement for anyone who commercially used an invention in good faith at least one year before the patent's effective filing date — provided the use was independently created.

Unlike § 102 (which can invalidate the patent for everyone), the § 273 defense is personal and non-transferable: it allows you to continue your existing commercial use even if the patent stands. The statute requires proof by “clear and convincing evidence.” A PriorMark timestamp predating the relevant window creates an independently verifiable record that directly supports meeting that burden.

Yes. Two landmark rulings:

France (2025): The Tribunal Judiciaire de Marseille, in AZ Factory v. Valeria Moda, became the first European court to explicitly recognize blockchain timestamping as valid IP evidence — awarding €11,900 in damages plus a full injunction.

China (2018): The Hangzhou Internet Court, in Huatai Media v. Daotong Technology, became the first court worldwide to admit blockchain-preserved records in litigation. China's Supreme People's Court subsequently codified this as a binding national evidentiary standard.

Yes — for anything involving formal patent protection, licensing negotiations, or litigation strategy. PriorMark provides a timestamped record of prior possession; the legal strategy for deploying that record in a specific dispute is a question for a licensed attorney. We are not a law firm and nothing on this site constitutes legal advice.

Detail matters significantly. A hash of a vague one-sentence description is far weaker than a hash of a full enabling disclosure — one that would allow someone skilled in the relevant field to understand and reproduce your invention. Include:

• A clear title and detailed description of what the invention or IP does
• How it works — the technical process, algorithm, formula, or design
• Supporting material: diagrams, code, schematics, or documentation
• Scope: what variations and applications does this cover?

The more complete the disclosure inside the hash, the stronger your position if you ever need to produce the original in a dispute.

Yes — and for evolving projects, you should. Each submission creates a new timestamp for that specific version. Submitting early concepts, working prototypes, and final versions builds a chain of dated development that establishes the full scope and timeline of your work, not just the endpoint. Earlier is always better.

No. Once a hash is written to the Hedera ledger, it is permanent — that immutability is what makes the timestamp trustworthy. You can add new submissions for updated versions of your work, but existing records cannot be altered or deleted. This applies to us as well: we have no ability to modify or remove your ledger records.

Your proof of claim is designed to survive without us. The SHA-3/512 hash and your submission timestamp are permanently recorded on the Hedera public ledger — accessible to anyone via HashScan, regardless of whether PriorMark exists.

If we ever cease to operate, we commit to providing 30 days' notice via email and keeping the self-verification guide accessible during that period. To verify your claim independently, you need only your original files and your HashScan link — no PriorMark account required.

Every submission includes a link to the public ledger entry on HashScan. To verify independently:

1. Locate your original files
2. Compute a SHA-3/512 hash of the file(s)
3. Compare your computed hash to the hash recorded on the ledger
4. Check the ledger timestamp on HashScan

If the hashes match, your content is authentic and the timestamp is the Hedera network's — confirmed entirely independently of PriorMark.