# Secure digital evidence for court without a notary visit

> The Hangzhou Internet Court in the People's Republic of China has operated a judicial alliance chain since 18 September 2018, with notary offices, forensic examination centres and courts acting as nodes. Digital content is hashed and timestamped at the moment of capture, so the court verifies the hash instead of requiring a notarial deed. The Supreme People's Court formally regulated the admissibility of such evidence in September 2018 and refined it in its 2021 online litigation rules.

**Sector:** Tertiary sector · **Industry:** Legal services and law firms · **Organisation:** Hangzhou Internet Court · **Maturity level:** Production

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/hangzhou-internet-court-digitale-beweise-gerichtsfest-notartermin-sichern

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Production
- **Evidence:** Evidence medium
- **Editorial review:** pending

## Description

The Hangzhou Internet Court in the People's Republic of China operates a judicial alliance chain through which digital evidence is secured. In cases of online legal infringements in copyright or trade, the evidence is fleeting because content is deleted or altered before proceedings begin. Classical notarial evidence preservation is too expensive and slow for this, so pursuing cases at the usual claim values in online trade often did not pay off.

In June 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court recognised for the first time in the case Hangzhou Huatai Media vs Shenzhen Daotong Technology evidence anchored by a third platform in the Factom and Bitcoin blockchains. In September of the same year, the Supreme People's Court issued provisions for hearing cases by internet courts and confirmed that evidence can be authenticated via electronic signatures, timestamps, hash value verification, blockchain and other tamper-proof methods. On 18 September 2018, the court launched the first national judicial platform for blockchain-supported evidence preservation, in which notaries, forensic expert bodies and courts each operate their own nodes. Digital content is hashed and timestamped at the moment of capture; in proceedings, the court then verifies the hash instead of requiring a notarial certificate. In 2021, the Supreme People's Court clarified in its online procedural rules how such evidence is to be examined, thereby creating additional legal certainty. The model was adopted by further internet courts in Beijing and Guangzhou and is thus the most far-reaching case so far in which a state court itself acts as operator of an evidence platform.

## Benefits

- Lower threshold for economically sensible pursuit of legal infringements.
- Evidence preservation as an ongoing process rather than an expensive one-off measure.
- Evidence preservation for online matters without prior notary appointment.
- Fleeting online content is securely preserved as evidence at the moment of capture.
- The expensive and slow notarial evidence preservation is eliminated for the captured case area.
- The evidential value is secured by provisions of the Supreme People's Court.
- Notaries, expert bodies and courts jointly operate nodes so that no party can manipulate alone.
- Clear judicial guidelines for examining blockchain-supported evidence.
- New role for notaries and expert bodies as node operators.

## Challenges

- Transfer to other legal systems requires a separate legal basis in each case.
- The model requires a statutory or supreme court basis, which is lacking in other legal systems.
- The anchoring proves the time and immutability, but not the substantive accuracy of the recorded content.
- The independence of the node operators is a prerequisite for the evidential value.
- Judges and lawyers must be able to assess cryptographic proofs and their limitations.

## Technology foundation

The court operates an alliance chain in which notaries, expert bodies and courts run their own nodes; the leading case from June 2018 was based on anchoring via Factom and the Bitcoin blockchain. A chain supported by several independent bodies is crucial here because the evidential value arises precisely from the fact that no party can subsequently alter the timestamp alone.

## Sources

- [China's innovative Internet Courts and their use of blockchain backed evidence](https://conflictoflaws.net/2019/chinas-innovative-internet-courts-and-their-use-of-blockchain-backed-evidence/)
- [China: Supreme Court Issues Rules on Internet Courts, Allowing for Blockchain Evidence](https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2018-09-21/china-supreme-court-issues-rules-on-internet-courts-allowing-for-blockchain-evidence/)
- [China: Supreme People's Court Issues Online Litigation Rules, Addressing Review of Blockchain Evidence](https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2021-07-21/china-supreme-peoples-court-issues-online-litigation-rules-addressing-review-of-blockchain-evidence/)