Systems and methods for verifying an electronic documents provenance date
| Title: | Systems and methods for verifying an electronic documents provenance date |
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| Patent Number: | 8,677,133 |
| Publication Date: | March 18, 2014 |
| Appl. No: | 12/368587 |
| Application Filed: | February 10, 2009 |
| Abstract: | The present invention validates provenance dates of electronic documents. A document version date may be determined by creating a unique checksum for the document and having the document's owner digitally sign it with a private key. The checksum and digital signature are securely stored by an authorization entity along with a timestamp fixing the date/time. A unique resource identifier is returned to the user. Subsequently, if the document's date needs to be proved to a third party, a verification program is applied to the original document to create a new checksum. The unique resource identifier is used to retrieve the signed checksum from the authorization entity. Upon verification of matching checksums, the timestamp provided by the authorization entity proves the date/time the document existed. In addition, the public key provided by the document owner proves that the checksum was signed by the owner's private key, proving their ownership. |
| Inventors: | Spencer, Gregory Reeves (Campbell, CA, US) |
| Assignees: | Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA, US) |
| Claim: | 1. A method for confirming a provenance date of an electronic document, the method comprising: obtaining the electronic document from a document provider at a first node of a computer network; obtaining a verification application from an authorization entity at a second node of a computer network; executing the verification application on the electronic document to create a verification checksum associated with the electronic document; providing a unique resource identifier and a decryption key to obtain a comparison checksum that has been stored independently from the electronic document at the authorization entity, the authorization entity maintaining a timestamp specifying a time when the comparison checksum was signed; and comparing the verification checksum with the comparison checksum, wherein if the verification checksum matches the comparison checksum, the provenance date of the electronic document is confirmed by the timestamp. |
| Claim: | 2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising receiving the timestamp from the authorization entity along with the comparison checksum. |
| Claim: | 3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the verification application is a transparent scripting application. |
| Current U.S. Class: | 713/178 |
| Patent References Cited: | 5136646 August 1992 Haber et al. 5606609 February 1997 Houser et al. 6381344 April 2002 Smithies et al. 6601172 July 2003 Epstein 6640301 October 2003 Ng 6978376 December 2005 Giroux et al. 7519824 April 2009 Peyravian et al. 7958349 June 2011 Parkinson 2003/0028605 February 2003 Millett et al. 2003/0159048 August 2003 Matsumoto et al. 2004/0261016 December 2004 Glass et al. 2005/0038787 February 2005 Cheung et al. 2006/0005028 January 2006 Labaton 2007/0050626 March 2007 Tokie et al. 2007/0156768 July 2007 Harrington et al. 2008/0091735 April 2008 Fukushima et al. 2009/0024673 January 2009 Barker et al. 2009/0132539 May 2009 Hockey 2010/0153511 June 2010 Lin WO92/03000 February 1992 |
| Other References: | Escrowed Encryption Standard (EES), Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 185, Feb. 9, 1994, 7 pages, http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip185.htm, downloaded Dec. 15, 2008. cited by applicant Sheffield Richard, “The Keys to a Reliable Escrow Agreement,” date unknown, 6 pages. cited by applicant |
| Assistant Examiner: | Almamun, Abdullah |
| Primary Examiner: | Zecher, Cordelia |
| Attorney, Agent or Firm: | Lerner, David, Littenberg, Krumholz & Mentlik, LLP |
| Accession Number: | edspgr.08677133 |
| Database: | USPTO Patent Grants |
| Language: | English |
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