Your evidence has a timestamp with a verifiable date. If someone questions it tomorrow, who confirms that the timestamp is real? The Prueba de Uso catalog answers that: any third party can check the date of your evidence without asking you for anything and without relying on our word.
When we timestamp each weekly edition of the catalog, the result isn’t kept only on our servers. It’s also recorded in an index that anyone can check online: the open catalog.
The open catalog publishes the digital fingerprint of the edition (a unique code generated from its content), the verifiable date of the timestamp and the appearances of the marks it includes. Your private documents and images are not published.
What the catalog publishes (and what it doesn’t)
- Published: the digital fingerprint (
SHA-256) of the timestamped edition. - Published: the exact date and time of the certified timestamp.
- Published: the appearance of each mark included in that edition.
- Not published: your documents, images or other private files.
The digital fingerprint works like a mathematical signature of your file. If the content changes by even one character, the fingerprint changes completely, so no one can alter the evidence after the timestamp without it showing.
The catalog doesn’t reveal what you saved. It only confirms that something with that exact fingerprint existed on that date. You decide who gets to see the actual content.
Why it matters that anyone can check it
Picture a trademark dispute where you need to prove your evidence existed before the other side’s. If the catalog were private, anyone could claim that Prueba de Uso tampered with it. Because it’s open and built on open standards, verification doesn’t depend on us.
- A judge can check it directly, without intermediaries.
- IMPI (Mexican Institute of Industrial Property) can confirm the date without asking you for the original file.
- The other side in a dispute can check for themselves that the timestamp wasn’t fabricated.
- You can check at any time that the edition hasn’t been altered.
Checking the certified timestamp doesn’t depend on Prueba de Uso. The standard behind it, RFC 3161, is open, and any compatible tool can verify it, even if Prueba de Uso disappeared.
The difference between your word and verifiable evidence
Without an open catalog, your evidence is only as good as your word: you say it existed on a certain date, and no third party can check that independently.
With the catalog, your word is no longer the only thing backing it. The fingerprint and the date are right there, visible to anyone who looks them up, at any time.
Being open exposes none of your information. What anyone can see is the proof that something existed on a given date, and you never have to hand over private files.
How your timestamp shows up in the catalog
You don’t have to do anything by hand. When Prueba de Uso processes the weekly edition, its record and the appearances of the marks are published automatically.
- You add your mark on the platform and activate your subscription.
- Every week, Prueba de Uso produces a single edition of the catalog with all active marks.
- It computes the digital fingerprint of that edition and applies the certified timestamp.
- The fingerprint, the timestamp date and each appearance are published automatically in the open catalog.
- You get a confirmation, and from then on any third party can verify your timestamp.
From then on, the record stays in the catalog, with no expiration date and nothing for you to maintain.