A Court in China has ruled that Blockchain technology can be used to provide evidence in litigation in a first-of-its-kind decision. The litigation involved the ownership of intellectual property, where a claim of IP was recorded on the Blockchain.
The Hangzhou Court of the Internet in China’s Zhejiang Province ruled that information stored on the Blockchain was “legally valid” and moreover, proved ownership of copyright. In that case, the claimant had uploaded the notation of a copyright claim on a third party Blockchain service and used screen shots of the Blockchain and the digital currency transactions to make its case.
Because the Blockchain acts as an unalterable ledger of information, the record of the micro financial transaction that created the record on the Blockchain was definite for evidentiary purposes.
The Canadian company was the first in the world to use Blockchain technology and smart contracts, in 2014, to operationalize a system to record legal interests such as copyright and IP claims, on a Blockchain. It filed for a patent in 2014 in the US.