Proving the authenticity and ownership of research-based IP

Recognising the need to demonstrate its timeline of discoveries and prove IP inventorship for legal defensibility, Australian pharmaceutical company Cancer Therapeutics CRC has invested in data authenticity protection.

Cancer Therapeutics CRC Pty Ltd (CTx), an Australian pharmaceutical discovery and development company, has selected Surety’s AbsoluteProof Service to help protect the company’s long-term ownership of its scientific intellectual property. By integrating AbsoluteProof into its research development workflow to ‘seal’ its digital data, CTx can prove that its electronic records of invention and intellectual property (IP) were created at defined points in time and are authentic, and can legally defend its ownership of such data if ever challenged.

Focused solely on developing newly discovered drug compounds from cancer research considered ‘high risk’ by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, CTx is required to meet strict electronic record protection standards and secure its data from unauthorised changes or tampering. AbsoluteProof’s independent, digital timestamping functionality meets these needs and helps to prevent intellectual property theft and manipulation, such as backdating ‘first-to-invent’ status.

AbsoluteProof provides scientists from institutions around the world with a centralised, easily accessible system that allows them to focus on their research, rather than time-consuming administrative tasks, including the signing and witnessing processes that are common in the biopharma industry.

“We realise the value of our IP through licensing deals, so we need to demonstrate to any potential partner or licensee that all critical electronic records and files will withstand the most vigorous legal scrutiny,” said Dr Tony Evans, CEO of Cancer Therapeutics CRC.

“All archived content must be able to be confirmed independently, and there must be no possibility of collusion, forgery or backdating. We rely on the AbsoluteProof Service to provide us with that defence, and it has allowed us to focus on what really matters - developing drug solutions and saving lives.”

CTx utilises enterprise-class electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) to manage the development, collaboration and storage of its experiments. It recognised that it needed a process whereby the exact time, date and format of each experiment could be captured in a neutral, legally defensible manner. Once an experiment progresses through the ELN, the data is then ‘sealed’ by AbsoluteProof and then archived for future reference. If at any time that content is revised or updated, the process is repeated and the updated version is re-sealed, while also preserving earlier versions in their ‘sealed’ state.

AbsoluteProof is a third-party, digital timestamping technology that delivers long-lasting protection; provides objective proof-of-record integrity and authenticity independent of an organisation’s people, processes and systems; and is compliant with US and international timestamp standards (ANSI X9.95 and ISO/IEC 18014-2). Based on the industry’s proven secure hash algorithms, SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160, AbsoluteProof uses Surety’s hash-chain-linking methodology to provide users with independent, irrefutable proof that their electronic scientific data has not been subject to forgery or compromise since the time it was created and ‘sealed’.

AbsoluteProof digitally timestamps research data traversing within the CTx lab workflow, delivering substantial evidentiary support should the authenticity or ownership of time-stamped records ever be legally challenged. A secure, digital timestamp verifiably ‘seals’ a record at any stage, enabling the integrity of its time of creation and content to be independently proved at any time during the life of that record. Additionally, researcher identity is captured and sealed alongside the content during the collaboration workflow, increasing the defensibility of the overall ‘sign and witness’ process.

“AbsoluteProof allows scientific research companies, such as Cancer Therapeutics CRC, to irrefutably record the exact date, time and format in which a laboratory notebook was created,” said Tom Klaff, CEO of Surety. “This allows researchers to defend their inventions and data integrity should they ever be subject to legal scrutiny. Companies that provide life-impacting solutions have extremely sensitive data that requires and deserves the utmost protection and authentication, and that’s exactly what AbsoluteProof provides to CTx.”

Surety, LLC

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