China's leading e-commerce platform JD.com's home appliances sector introduced timestamping technology by cooperating with UniTrust Time Stamp Authority last week, as part of its efforts to better protect the intellectual property rights of online shops.

A timestamp is an electronic certificate that keeps track of the creation and modification time of a document. It shows who uploaded the works and when.

Shop owners on the platform can apply for timestamps for their self-made works, including photos and words submitted to the website, to be certified as the owner of the works. Anyone who copies or uses these works without permission will be violating intellectual property rights, said Zhang Changli, chairman of Beijing UniTrust Tech Service Co Ltd, operator of the timestamp authority.

The company has provided technical support for UniTrust Time Stamp Authority - the only such authority in China - since 2006, together with the National Time Service Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The technology has been used in healthcare, electronic documents, finance and justice.

He Chao, director of the home appliances department of JD.com, said fake trademarks, patents and pictures are common on e-commerce platforms, and shop owners have become more aware of the situation.

Traditional methods of IP protection need a long time and involve high costs, while timestamps are a useful tool to guarantee the rights of shop owners and the reliability of the JD platform, he said.

"Timestamps, as evidence easily gained and approved by legal institutes, can reduce costs when defending rights on our platform," he said.

Zhang said UniTrust's copyright protection service can grant rights certificates in less than a second thanks to the timestamping technology. So far the company has helped its clients to win about 800 IP cases.

"We want to promote online shop owners' IP awareness and encourage them to release their works on the internet without worrying about being copied," he said.

Yu Cike, director of the copyright management department at the National Copyright Administration, said the administration encourages e-commerce platforms to use high technology such as timestamping to protect intellectual properties.

UniTrust has expanded its business in countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany and South Korea.

It cooperated with German-based automobile company Volkswagen in protecting luxury car designs and recording customer service phone calls, according to Zhang.

"Many documents were stored in electronic forms. Timestamps can be used to confirm who created them and when. The cost of finding and confirming evidence in disputes could be reduced in such fields as commerce, tax and cultural businesses," he added.

So far, about 50 courts in China have used trusted timstamps in about 1,000 cases, he said.

chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/28/2017 page17)