Your copyright starts the moment you create.
Proving it starts later, and that is the problem.
Photographers, illustrators, designers, musicians and writers rarely lose a dispute over who owns the work. They lose it over who can show a date. Sealing a file gives you a dated, tamper-evident record of that exact version, and anyone can check it without asking you for anything.
Copyright in your work already exists automatically in the 181 member states of the Berne Convention , with no registration anywhere. What a seal adds is separate and narrower: a qualified timestamp carries a legal presumption of the accuracy of its date and the integrity of the sealed data under eIDAS Article 41(2) , so the file itself carries the evidence instead of your memory.
Proof record
portrait-series-final.tif
What this answers: this exact file existed in this exact state on that date. Change one pixel afterwards and the certificate stops matching.
The dispute you actually end up in
Almost nobody argues about whether a photograph or an illustration is protected. The argument is about sequence. A client says the concept was theirs. A marketplace receives a takedown claim from someone else. A brand uses your image and says it came from a stock library. In every one of those, the question is the same: who had this file first, and can you show it.
The things creators normally reach for at that point do not survive contact with the question:
- A file's created date is metadata. Anyone can change it in seconds, so it proves nothing on its own.
- A post on a social platform shows when you published, not when you made it, and the platform can delete the account.
- Emailing a file to yourself shows a mail server accepted a message. It does not fix the content of the attachment.
- A cloud folder shows an upload time controlled by the same account that could have altered the file.
None of these are worthless. They are just all held by you, or by a company that owes you nothing, and the other side knows it.
What a qualified timestamp actually gives you
Sealing takes a cryptographic fingerprint of the file and binds it to a time issued by a qualified trust service provider. The original never leaves your hands unless you choose to store it. What comes back is a certificate that stands on its own.
- It fixes a date. Not a date you typed, one issued by a regulated third party.
- It fixes the content. Any later edit, however small, breaks the match and that is visible to anyone checking.
- It is verifiable by strangers. A lawyer, a marketplace or a client can validate the certificate without an account and without contacting you.
- It works on any file type. Raw photographs, layered design files, project archives, stems, manuscripts, 3D scenes.
- It says nothing about the content itself. Sealing is proof of existence and integrity at a moment, not a judgement about originality.
A qualified timestamp under eIDAS Article 41(2) carries a legal presumption of the accuracy of its date and the integrity of the data. In practice that shifts who has to do the work: instead of you proving the date, the other side has to attack a regulated timestamp.
Compared with what most creators do now
Each of these is used somewhere. The column that matters is the last one, because that is what the other side will point at.
| What creators do | What it shows | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|
| File metadata | A creation date stored in the file | Editable by anyone holding the file, including you |
| Posting it publicly | That it was published by that date | Publication is not creation, and the account can vanish |
| Emailing yourself | That a message arrived at a time | The attachment is not fixed and headers can be disputed |
| Cloud storage history | An upload time inside one provider | Controlled by the account that could have changed the file |
| Qualified timestamp | This exact file existed in this exact state at this time | Does not decide authorship or originality, only the record |
How it works
Three steps, and the second one is the only part that involves us. Most creators seal at the same point every time, usually when a version is final or when it is about to leave their machine.
Pick the version worth fixing
The final export, the layered master, the delivered set, the stems. Anything you would want to point at later.
Seal it
A fingerprint of the file is timestamped by a qualified trust service provider and returned as a certificate. The file's content is never exposed by the fingerprint.
Keep the certificate, share it when asked
Send it with a delivery, attach it to a licence, or hand it to a lawyer. Whoever receives it can verify it independently.
If you already have a delivery routine, sealing fits inside it. The habit matters more than the tooling: a work sealed on the day it was made is worth far more than one sealed after a dispute starts.
Who this is for
The pattern is the same across disciplines. You produce files, you hand them to someone, and later somebody asks when.
Photographers
Raw sets before a client edit, unreleased series, images licensed to a brand that later appears somewhere it should not.
Illustrators and designers
Concepts pitched to a client who then produces something very similar, and layered files that show the working process.
Musicians and producers
Demos, stems and arrangements shared with collaborators, labels or sync agents before anything is signed.
Writers
Manuscripts, scripts and pitch documents sent to agents, publishers or production companies.
3D and motion artists
Scene files, rigs and renders delivered into pipelines where several studios touch the same asset.
Anyone licensing work
A certificate attached to a licence tells the licensee exactly which version they are allowed to use.
Questions creators ask
Do I need to register my copyright somewhere?
No. Under the Berne Convention, copyright in your work exists automatically in all 181 member states from the moment the work is created, with no registration and no formality. What is missing is evidence of when. A qualified timestamp supplies that evidence without changing anything about the underlying right.
Does sealing prove that I am the author?
It proves that a specific file existed in a specific state at a specific time, and that the seal was made from your account. Authorship is a separate question that a court decides on the whole picture. In practice, being able to produce the earliest fixed version is one of the strongest things you can bring to that picture.
Do you keep a copy of my work?
Sealing works on a cryptographic fingerprint of the file, so the timestamp itself never contains your content and nothing about the work can be reconstructed from it. Storing the file with us is a separate choice you make, not a requirement of sealing.
What happens if I edit the file after sealing it?
The certificate stops matching, and that is the point. It is evidence about one exact version. If you want a later version covered, seal that one too. Creators working through revisions often seal each milestone, which produces a dated chain of the work developing.
Will this help outside Switzerland and the EU?
The eIDAS Article 41(2) presumption applies in the EU. In Switzerland the provider issuing the timestamp is supervised under ZertES. Elsewhere a court is not bound by it, but a timestamp issued by a regulated European trust service provider is still an independent, checkable record of the date, which is more than a screenshot or a file date offers anywhere.
The Creator Proof-of-Creation Checklist
The points that decide a creative-work dispute, in the order they come up. Enter your email to unlock the full list.
Seal before it leaves your machine
Apply a qualified timestamp to the final export before it goes to a client, a platform or a collaborator.
Seal the layered original, not only the export
The working file shows the process. It is the strongest single artefact you can produce in a dispute.
Seal each milestone, not just the last one
A dated chain of revisions is far harder to argue against than one file that appeared fully formed.
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Ready to seal your first document?
eIDAS Art. 41 qualified timestamp, court-admissible across the EU and Switzerland.
Seal Now →Seal the version you would want to point at later
Start with one file. The work you sealed today is the work you can evidence in two years, and the one you did not is the one you will be arguing about.
Seal your first fileQualified, eIDAS Art. 41