Business
12:06, 29-Jun-2018
China's Internet court rules blockchain evidence 'legally valid'
Updated
11:26, 02-Jul-2018
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A Chinese court has ruled that blockchain technology can be used to provide evidence in legal cases, in a first-of-its-kind decision that could impact how future intellectual property disputes in the tech and Internet sectors are decided.
Xinhua reported on Thursday that the Hangzhou Court of the Internet in east China’s Zhejiang Province declared data stored on the blockchain was “legally valid,” in a copyright infringement case between a Hangzhou-based media company and a Shenzhen technology firm.
The Hangzhou firm, Huatai Yimei, used screenshots of webpages operated by the Shenzhen firm in court as evidence of copyright infringement. Prior to the case, Huatai Yimei uploaded the evidence to a third-party blockchain platform, baoquan.com.
Blockchain technology acts as an unalterable ledger of information. In this case, even if the defendant had deleted the incriminating webpages, the evidence submitted on the blockchain can neither be deleted nor changed by any party.
According to Xinhua, the Hangzhou Court of the Internet ruled that “an open and neutral stance” should be maintained when looking at blockchain-based evidence, before confirming that thanks to the reliability and neutrality of the technology, the screenshots could be used as legitimate evidence.
The Hangzhou court was established last year, with the aim of handling cyberspace-related crimes while using technology to speed up the legal process. Defendants and plaintiffs can appear in court via video links, while documents and files can be submitted online via an e-evidence platform.
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