Prove priority: IP, research, and designs

Priority disputes are decided on evidence: who can prove they possessed the design, the dataset, the manuscript, the invention disclosure — and when. A trusted timestamp on a file's hash establishes exactly that: the content existed, in this exact form, at this moment, attested by an authority independent of you. And because only the hash is transmitted, the material itself — often the most sensitive thing your organisation owns — never leaves your systems.

The flow

# Everything stays local except the 64-character digest
HASH=$(sha256sum invention-disclosure-v3.docx | awk '{print $1}')

curl -s -X POST https://api.sigill.ai/tsa/stamp-hash \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIGILL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"hashHex\":\"$HASH\",\"qualified\":true,\"label\":\"invention-disclosure-v3\"}" \
  | jq -r '.tsrBase64' | base64 -d > invention-disclosure-v3.docx.tsr

Store the .tsr token alongside the file, treat the pair as immutable, and you hold a proof that verifies with stock OpenSSL decades from now — no Sigill dependency, no account. For evidence intended for legal proceedings, qualified: true sources the timestamp from the EU trust list, giving it statutory evidentiary weight — see Qualified timestamps for legal-grade evidence.

What kinds of material this fits

• Invention disclosures and research notes — before filing, before publication, before pitching.
• Designs and creative work — establish possession without registering or revealing anything.
• Datasets and models — prove what the training data or weights were at a point in time.
• Source trees — hash a release tarball or a repository bundle; pair naturally with CI stamping.
• Anything shown to a counterparty — timestamp the exact deck, spec, or sample you shared, before you share it.

Directory-sized material

Hash a canonical archive so the proof covers the whole tree:

tar --sort=name --mtime='UTC 2026-01-01' -cf design-pack.tar design/
sha256sum design-pack.tar   # timestamp this digest; archive the tar with the token

The deterministic flags matter: re-creating the archive must reproduce the same bytes, or a future verification compares against a different hash.

What the proof establishes — and what it doesn't

A timestamp proves existence and integrity at a time: this exact content, no later than this moment. It does not by itself prove authorship or inventorship — it is one strong, tamper-evident exhibit in that larger argument. For documents where who stood behind the content also matters, add an organisation seal (choose a format) so identity and time travel together in one artifact.