TL;DR: Copyright protects your work from the moment you create it, so a dispute turns on proving the date. To prove you created something first, keep your dated drafts and source files, and timestamp the finished file before you send or publish it. TRUE Vault anchors the SHA-256 fingerprint of the file on a public blockchain and gives you a permanent proof link that anyone can check for free in TRUE Verify.
It happens more often than creators expect. You publish a design, a song, a photo or a piece of code. Months later someone else is selling it, posting it or claiming they made it first. You know it is yours. You cannot prove it.
The law was on your side the whole time. What was missing was a record outside your own computer that fixes the date.
You prove you created something first with evidence that fixes a date outside your own control: dated drafts, original source files, delivery records and an independent timestamp on the finished file. The timestamp carries the most weight when it was made before anyone else saw the work, because a later copy cannot claim an earlier date. TRUE Vault creates that timestamp by anchoring a fingerprint of the file on a public blockchain.
Four habits cover most creators, from a freelance designer to a developer shipping code:
None of the four costs much on the day. Rebuilding a creation date after a dispute has started is harder, and sometimes impossible.
You timestamp creative work for copyright protection by recording a cryptographic fingerprint of the finished file in an independent record at a known time, before you share the work. In TRUE Vault you upload the file, TRUE creates its SHA-256 fingerprint and anchors it on a public blockchain, and you receive a permanent proof URL. The timestamp does not create copyright, which already exists. It creates evidence of the date.
The fingerprint, a hash, is a short string calculated from every byte of the file. Change a single byte and the fingerprint changes completely. A timestamp on the exact file you delivered therefore beats a screenshot or a description: a cropped, recoloured or exported copy no longer matches.
A TRUE Vault proof states three things. This exact file existed at this exact time. The file has not been altered since it was secured. And it shows who secured it, because every file is tied to the TRUE account of the person who uploaded it. In plain language the proof reads: "This file is unchanged since [date]. Secured by [name] on [date]."
You decide who sees the proof. A link can be public for anyone who has it, private to you or password protected, and you can name a recipient who confirms they have seen the file. TRUE works with several public blockchains, among them Ethereum and Polygon.
Timestamp the finished file, and the drafts at the points where the work changed shape. A photographer secures the full-resolution originals before they go to a magazine. An illustrator secures the layered file before posting a work in progress. A songwriter secures the demo before a producer hears it.
The notice costs nothing. The US Copyright Office states that copyright notice “is optional for works published on or after March 1, 1989” and that “there are legal benefits for including notice on your work.” A TRUE Vault proof already records who secured the file. A name inside the file ties the work to you a second time.
Proof of existence shows that a specific file existed in a specific form at a specific time and has not changed since. Proof of authorship shows who created the work, and it is built from several pieces of evidence that point to the same person rather than from one record. A blockchain timestamp is proof of existence, and a TRUE Vault proof also records who secured the file, which ties each existence proof to a named account.
The difference shows in a real dispute. Say a client claims their in-house team drew the logo you delivered. Your existence proof shows the final file was in your account in March. Your authorship case is the sequence around it: the first sketch, three rejected versions, the layered working file and the delivery email, each secured in TRUE Vault on the day it was made. A copyist can produce the finished logo. A copyist rarely has the sketches.
TRUE Vault calls itself a proof-of-existence platform, and the label is exact. The proof fixes what you had and when, under your name, in a form anyone can check. Authorship is the conclusion a client, a platform or a court draws when those dated records all point at you.
Copyright is automatic in every member of the Berne Convention: a work is protected from the moment it is created, with no registration needed. This is set out in the Berne Convention, signed by 180+ countries. WIPO's summary of the treaty states the rule in one line: "Protection must not be conditional upon compliance with any formality". Registration, in the countries that offer it, adds evidence and remedies on top.
The United States shows what registration adds. In the United States, registration is optional but practically important. You don't need it to own a copyright, but you do need it to sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees in federal court. The US Copyright Office states that "Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form", yet a US work must be registered before its owner can sue for infringement. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 when the infringement was wilful. Section 412 makes those damages depend on registering before the infringement began or within three months of first publication. The Copyright Office adds that registration within five years of publication counts as prima facie evidence in court.
In the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, and most of the rest of the world, there is no copyright register. Protection is automatic, and disputes are resolved on evidence. The United Kingdom has no register at all. GOV.UK says so plainly: "There is not a register of copyright works in the UK." In Sweden, chapter 35, section 1 of the Code of Judicial Procedure tells the court to decide what is proven after a careful assessment of everything in the case. Where there is no register, a dispute about who came first is decided on the evidence each side can show.
The methods that hold up are the ones someone else can check: copyright registration, trusted time stamps and blockchain timestamps. Mailing a copy to yourself and relying on file metadata are weak, because the envelope and the metadata both stay in your own hands. Five methods, and where each one stands:
You seal a copy of the work in an envelope, post it to yourself and keep it unopened, with the postmark as the date. Courts and copyright offices have repeatedly noted that it provides little real protection. The US Copyright Office dismisses the practice in its FAQ: "There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration." An envelope can be posted empty and filled later, or steamed open and resealed.
Verdict: Weak. Do not rely on it.
Cameras, design software and music software stamp files with creation dates, and photographers often point to EXIF data. Metadata is editable. Dates can be reset and EXIF fields overwritten with free tools, by anyone who holds the file.
Verdict: Useful as supporting context next to a stronger record. Not enough alone.
In countries with a register, most notably the United States, you file the work with the national copyright office, and the record fixes a date and supports a presumption of ownership.
Cons: Takes weeks to months. Costs money per work. Impractical for high-volume creators (a photographer with hundreds of images a week, an illustrator posting daily). Not available everywhere, and not required everywhere either.
Verdict: Strong legal weight where it exists. Impractical for everything you make.
A time-stamping authority signs a hash of your file together with the time. The common technical standard for this is RFC 3161, the Time-Stamp Protocol published by the Internet Engineering Task Force in August 2001: “A time-stamping service supports assertions of proof that a datum existed before a particular time.” In the EU, a qualified electronic time stamp under the eIDAS Regulation must come from a qualified trust service provider on the EU Trusted List, and it carries a legal presumption that its date and time are accurate. In the EU, eIDAS qualified timestamps have specific legal weight and are recognised across member states. The proof depends on that provider, and checking it takes technical tools.
Verdict: The right choice where a rule asks for a qualified time stamp. Less accessible for individual creators.
A blockchain timestamp writes the SHA-256 fingerprint of your file into a public blockchain. The hash does not reveal the file's contents, but it does prove the file existed at that block height. Anyone can recompute the fingerprint from the file and compare it with the chain, without trusting you or the service that recorded it. A record written into a block cannot be moved to an earlier block, so it cannot be backdated, and public chains have no delete function. For the mechanics, see how blockchain verification works.
A blockchain anchor and an eIDAS qualified time stamp are separate mechanisms with separate jobs. TRUE's explainer Are blockchain timestamps eIDAS qualified timestamps? sets out which one a given rule asks for. For creative work, the strength of the blockchain anchor is that the check is open to everyone, in every country.
Verdict: Strong, fast and suited to everything you make, every day.
Across all five, the line runs between records anyone can check and records that depend on a single custodian. The same line separates a PDF from a TRUE Original document, as set out in paper, PDF or TRUE Original document.
You prove code existed at a specific time by timestamping an exported snapshot of it, such as a release archive, in an independent record outside your own machine. Git history alone is your own record: the Git documentation describes the commit option --date as "Override the author date used in the commit." Secure the archive in TRUE Vault and its fingerprint covers every byte of every file inside it.
A developer who sends a prototype to a prospective partner can export the repository at that commit as a zip file, secure it in TRUE Vault and put the proof link in the email. If the partner later ships the same code, the developer can show the exact files, unchanged, with a date fixed on a public blockchain. Commits pushed to a hosting service help too. That record lives on someone else's servers.
git archive -o latest.zip HEAD creates a zip file with “the contents of the latest commit on the current branch”, according to the Git documentation.The code does not become public. Only the fingerprint goes on the blockchain, and a hash does not reveal what the files contain. A TRUE Vault proof link can be public, private to you or password protected.
You protect NFT artwork by timestamping its source files in TRUE Vault before you mint, so your proof dates from when you made the work and not from the day of the sale. Minting records a token on a blockchain on the day you mint. The evidence that you created the artwork lies earlier, in the sketches, the layered working file and the finished export.
If someone mints a copy of your piece, the question becomes who had the artwork first. A TRUE Vault proof of the original file, secured before either token existed, answers with a date anyone can check. A series of earlier drafts under the same account shows the work growing in your hands.
A timestamp settles who came first when it predates the other side's earliest record of the work, because a later copy cannot claim an earlier date. Four situations creators run into show the pattern. In each one, a TRUE Vault proof made before the dispute changes what the conversation is about.
You finish a logo for a client and send it over. The client says the project is on hold. Three months later the logo is in use, and the client tells people their in-house team designed it.
With a TRUE Vault proof from the day of delivery, the conversation stops being your word against theirs. You can show the exact file, dated three months before the launch. The client can point to an earlier-dated source of their own. Or they cannot.
You shoot a portrait series for a magazine. The magazine pushes publication back. Meanwhile the images turn up in a competitor's feed, lightly cropped and recoloured.
If you secured the full-resolution originals in TRUE Vault before sending them, your proof predates the competitor's post. You also hold the original, unaltered file, which a copyist generally does not have.
You send a producer a beat or a rough arrangement. Months later a track lands on the streaming services with your hook. The producer says they wrote it independently.
A TRUE Vault proof of the exact file you sent gives you a fixed date that does not live in your inbox. Email accounts get lost, archived and contested. A record on a public blockchain stays where it was written.
You post a work in progress on social media. A larger account posts a finished version of your concept as its own.
Social platforms timestamp uploads, but those timestamps sit inside their systems and can be hard to obtain in a dispute. A TRUE Vault proof of the layered original, secured before the post went up, gives you a record that does not depend on the platform.
A timestamp protects your claim against AI copies by fixing the date of your original file before any copy exists. AI image, music and writing tools can produce work in the style of any creator with enough public output to learn from, and once a near copy appears, the argument is about who came first. A TRUE Vault proof made before publication answers that with a date anyone can check.
The habit is small. Secure the work that matters before it goes public.
A TRUE Vault proof and a copyright registration do different jobs, and they work well together. The TRUE Vault proof fixes the content and date of every file you make, in about a minute per file, while a US registration gives access to statutory damages for the works you register. For high-stakes US commercial work, register the key works and secure every file in TRUE Vault on the day it is finished.
Blockchain-anchored timestamps and trusted timestamping (such as eIDAS qualified timestamps in the EU) are accepted as evidence of file existence and integrity. In most jurisdictions, a blockchain-anchored timestamp is accepted as evidence that a specific file existed at a specific time and has not been altered since. What it provides is third-party verifiable evidence of content and date, a class of evidence increasingly recognised in civil disputes, arbitration, and regulatory proceedings. A blockchain timestamp is evidence, and courts weigh evidence. A dated record of the exact file, which the other side can check without trusting you, is the kind of evidence that assessment can rest on. Once a dispute is active, an IP lawyer in the relevant country decides how to present it.
Yes, a studio or agency can secure every file it delivers in TRUE Vault, and organisations can book a walkthrough of custom domains, bulk securing, API access and a team dashboard. TRUE Vault runs inside the TRUE Original platform, which has issued over 900,000 documents for more than 200 organisations in over 15 countries. Those organisations issue diplomas, certificates and licences that anyone can verify without calling the issuer. The platform is eIDAS compliant and anchors records on several public blockchains, among them Ethereum and Polygon.
For neighbouring uses of blockchain-anchored proof, see making documents tamper-proof, proving what an email said and famous document fraud cases. The product behind this guide is described in TRUE Vault: prove any file existed, unchanged.
Copyright exists from the moment you create the work, so without registration you prove it with dated evidence: drafts, source files, delivery records and an independent timestamp on the finished file. The record that carries the most weight is a timestamp made before anyone else saw the work, such as a TRUE Vault proof, which anchors the file's SHA-256 fingerprint on a public blockchain and cannot be backdated.
A blockchain timestamp is proof of existence: it shows that a specific file existed in a specific form at a specific time and has not changed since. Authorship is built from several pieces of evidence that point to the same person, and a TRUE Vault proof adds one of them by recording who secured the file. Drafts secured under your account before anyone else published the work are what turn existence proofs into an authorship case.
A blockchain timestamp is evidence that a court can weigh: it shows that a specific file existed at a specific time and has not been altered since, and anyone can check it against the public blockchain. It does not register copyright, so in the United States registration is still needed for statutory damages. In an active dispute, an IP lawyer in the relevant country decides how to present it.
No. Mailing a copy of your work to yourself proves only that an envelope was posted, and the US Copyright Office states that "it is not a substitute for registration." An envelope can be posted empty and filled later.
No, not on its own, because EXIF data and file dates can be edited by anyone who holds the file. Keep the RAW files as supporting context and secure the originals in TRUE Vault before publication, which gives you an independent record that cannot be changed afterwards.
Yes. Anyone, whether a client, a platform or opposing counsel, can drop the file into TRUE Verify, free and without an account, and see whether it is unchanged since it was secured. The check compares the fingerprint of the file with the record on the public blockchain, so it does not depend on trusting you or TRUE.
You get your first file timestamped by uploading it at trueoriginal.com/vault. The first file is free, and it takes about a minute. If someone has sent you a proof link, drop their file into TRUE Verify and see whether it is unchanged.
A file secured today can still be verified in twenty years, byte for byte, against the same record.
TRUE Original, Stockholm. Secure digital documents since 2020.
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