The DTSA defines a trade secret as:

“all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if—

(A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and

(B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by, another person who can obtain economic value from the disclosure or use of the information”

18 U.S.C. § 1839(3)(A)–(B). The “reasonable measures” standard is the operative requirement a PriorMark timestamp directly supports — it is an affirmative, documented step taken at the time the secret existed.

The UTSA, adopted by 48 states and the District of Columbia, defines a trade secret as:

“information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that:

(i) derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and

(ii) is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.”

Uniform Trade Secrets Act § 1(4) (1985 with amendments). Although the DTSA and UTSA use slightly different phrasing, courts treat the “reasonable measures” standard as functionally equivalent across both regimes.

DuPont alleged that Kolon Industries misappropriated trade secrets related to Kevlar manufacturing after a former DuPont employee provided confidential information. The jury awarded $919.9 million — one of the largest trade secret verdicts in US history.

The case was strong, but establishing precisely what had been misappropriated and when DuPont had developed each element required years of litigation and extensive internal documentation produced under discovery. A timestamped chain of custody for each development milestone — formulation changes, manufacturing refinements, performance testing — would have compressed that process materially and removed years of evidentiary dispute.

Convolve shared proprietary noise-reduction technology with Seagate and Compaq under NDA during licensing discussions. Both companies allegedly incorporated the technology without completing a license. After 15 years of litigation — one of the longest trade secret cases in US history — Convolve recovered approximately $3 million.

The case collapsed not because the misappropriation was implausible, but because Convolve could not prove with sufficient specificity which elements of its technology qualified as trade secrets, what was in its possession at the time of NDA disclosure, and where the boundaries of its IP were. A timestamped ledger record created before the NDA disclosure would have answered those questions from day one.

(a) Novelty; Prior Art.— A person shall be entitled to a patent unless—

(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention;

(a) In General.— A person shall be entitled to a defense under section 282(b) with respect to subject matter consisting of a process, or consisting of a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter used in a manufacturing or other commercial process, that would otherwise infringe a claimed invention being asserted against the person if—

(1) such person, acting in good faith, commercially used the subject matter in the United States, either in connection with an internal commercial use or an actual arm's length sale or other arm's length commercial transfer of a useful end result of such commercial use; and

(2) such commercial use occurred at least 1 year before the earlier of either— (A) the effective filing date of the claimed invention; or (B) the date on which the claimed invention was disclosed to the public in a manner that qualified for the exception from prior art under section 102(b).

(b) Burden of Proof.— A person asserting a defense under this section shall have the burden of establishing the defense by clear and convincing evidence.

The court applied the Daubert admissibility standard and accepted blockchain records as reliable evidence, characterizing the Bitcoin blockchain as:

“Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a decentralized, immutable, chronological, public ledger, referred to as the ‘blockchain.’”

This characterization of blockchain records as immutable and chronological applies to any public distributed ledger, including Hedera. The Daubert ruling means blockchain records meet the reliability standard for admission in US federal court.

The Ninth Circuit — the highest US appellate court to address the question — accepted blockchain-recorded creation dates and metadata as factual evidence in an IP dispute, finding:

“[W]hen one person transfers an NFT to another, a record of the transaction becomes permanently stored on the blockchain.”

“[M]etadata information from Ethereum blockchain-based smart contracts is accessible to anyone using a searchable blockchain explorer.”

The court treated on-chain timestamps as established facts requiring no special proof. PriorMark records are publicly verifiable through HashScan in the same manner.

In an intellectual property dispute over a blockchain protocol, the court accepted blockchain immutability as an undisputed technical fact, defining the technology as:

“[A blockchain is] a distributed protocol that stores transactional records as a chain of ‘blocks’ . . . each block cannot be retroactively altered.”

The tamper-proof nature of blockchain records — accepted here as a matter of judicial fact in an IP case — is the technical basis for PriorMark's priority timestamps.

“[The court] recognized for the first time that a timestamp recorded on a blockchain could constitute prima facie evidence of the prior existence of a work.”

The court accorded full probative weight to the blockchain timestamp reports dated 5 May 2021 and 15 September 2021, corroborated by a bailiff's verification report dated 19 October 2022, deeming them “legitimate and compelling” evidence of copyright ownership and anteriority.

Translation via European Intellectual Property Office. Original judgment in French — full text available through Legifrance.

“Blockchain technology, with its advantages of distributed storage, tamper-proof mechanism and traceability, can be used as a technical means to preserve electronic data.”

The court validated the blockchain-stored evidence on the basis that it had “clear source, [traceable] generation and transmission paths,” corroborated by webpage screenshots and source code, finding the data “had not been tampered with.”

From the official English summary published by China Courts. Subsequently codified by China's Supreme People's Court as a binding national evidentiary standard.