Digital document authentication system for providing certificate which authenticates and uniquely identifies document

Abstract

A process for time-stamping a digital document is provided. The process provides a certificate which not only allows for the authentication of a document at a later time but which includes a name or nickname which allows for the unique identification of the document at a later time. The name or nickname provided in accordance with the present invention is not only simple and concise but allows for the self-authentication of the document which it refers to. The name can be used when two independent parties desire to refer to the same unique document in a quick and simple way.

Description

(1) Technical field [0001] The invention relates to a digital file identification system for authenticating and uniquely identifying a certain file. More particularly, the present invention relates to a digital document time stamping system which provides a unique, user-friendly encrypted name for a digital document by means of an authentication certificate. (2) Background technology [0002] In many applications, it is necessary to establish the date and time when a file was created and to prove that the file has not been modified since that time. This problem is particularly acute for digital files, which are susceptible to change because digital files are often stored in digital form on media that is subject to change and provides no indication of past history. When storing, however, it is so easy to make a complete copy of a digital file that it is so easy to speak of an "original copy" of a computer file. Any of these reproductions may be modified for convenience, bot...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0012] Since schemes for naming a file by its own one-way hash value are inherently identifiable, such schemes have several inconvenient features

First, the name is too long for a human user to remember, or even easily teleport to another person

Second, the author of the document has no control over the form of the name

Therefore, due to inconvenience to the author, there is no connection, either in form or in substance, between the names of interrelated documents

Similarly, the name of a particular file gives no information about the named file

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