Every week, Prueba de Uso produces a single edition of its catalog that includes your mark and gives it a certified timestamp.
If someone challenges your mark in the future, how do you show that this exact edition of the catalog existed on a specific date and wasn’t altered afterwards? Two pieces work together to answer that: a digital fingerprint and a timestamp.
First, what a digital fingerprint is
Think of it as a fingerprint of a file. The most widely used algorithm is called SHA-256. It reads every bit of your file and produces a short string of characters, something like 3b4c9f…d812a0.
- If the file doesn’t change, the fingerprint is always the same.
- If you change even a single comma, the fingerprint changes completely.
- You can’t rebuild the original file from its fingerprint.
The fingerprint doesn’t contain your file’s content. That’s why it’s safe to send it to a third party without revealing what’s inside.
Second, what a certified timestamp is
A timestamp is issued by a Time Stamping Authority (TSA). Its job is to take your file’s fingerprint and sign it together with the exact date and time it received it.
The result is a token that says, in essence: “I, a trusted third party, certify that this fingerprint reached my servers on day X at H:MM:SS.” The token carries the TSA’s digital signature, so no one can alter it without it showing.
The standard behind all this is RFC 3161. It’s an open international protocol, so anyone with the right software can verify the timestamp independently, without relying on the provider or on Prueba de Uso.
How the two work together
Combined, they let you prove two things at once, as long as you have the original file and its timestamp:
- That this exact file existed on that date (its fingerprint matches the one the TSA signed).
- That the file wasn’t modified afterwards (if someone edited it, its fingerprint would no longer match the one in the timestamp).
Think of the postmark on a letter, except this one is practically impossible to forge. A regular postmark can be imitated; this one is backed by cryptography and an open protocol that any judge or authority can check independently.
In practice: if IMPI (Mexican Institute of Industrial Property) or a third party challenges your mark, you submit the file and the timestamp. Anyone can confirm, without intermediaries, that the document existed on that date and wasn’t altered.
How Prueba de Uso does it for you
Every week, Prueba de Uso computes the fingerprint of the edition that includes your mark, sends it to a certified TSA and stores the resulting timestamp alongside your evidence.
This happens once per weekly edition and covers every active mark in it. You don’t need to know anything about cryptography or install any software.
- The timestamp is linked to your mark in the Prueba de Uso catalog, which anyone can open.
- Anyone can look it up and verify it with standard
RFC 3161tools. - You keep access to the original edition, its timestamp and the certificate for each appearance.
You end up with a continuous record of your mark’s appearances, every edition dated and certified, ready to add to your file whenever you need it.