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A Body Guard for Your Ideas By Beth Cox February 8, 2000 So, you and your "future" business partner are sitting around, tossing a few back, and discussing a few ideas for e-commerce innovations that could make you both rich. Or maybe you''re just noodling some chords on your guitar and you think, "Hey, that''s catchy." A couple of brews into the process and you hit on the programming concept or a hot new Web site idea or a great tune. The last thing you want is to see your idea implemented by someone else a year down the road. What''s a daydreamer to do? One answer may be FirstUse.com, an online registry that features time-stamped registration of intellectual property and digital records. It''s a sort of digital fingerprinting of any computer file, including music files, in the event that someone ever challenges the origin or development of your ideas or the integrity of your records. Firstuse.com says it wants to be "the world''s most trusted third party registry and strategic resource to help build, manage and protect ideas and records." Firstuse.com can guarantee that a document -- or any file -- existed, in a known state, on the date the fingerprint was created. Lawyers tend to like that concept if they end up in court on your behalf. The Web site also provides links to legal, copyright, patent and trademark services, resources to help protect, commercialize or license intellectual property, and software tools to manage important personal and business records. The company has a number of partner agreements, and just announced a deal with The Patent & License Exchange Inc. to increase security in online transactions of intellectual property. The Patent & License Exchange (PLE) is an e-business marketplace for intellectual property rights including patents, copyrights and trademarks. Firstuse.com said it will authenticate time-sensitive escrow documents and intellectual property placed online by clients. "The market for intellectual property is terribly risky," said Nir Kossovsky, chief executive officer of PLE. "Risk reduction is our primary strategy for creating a liquid market, and Firstuse.com''s sealed audit trail -- a risk reduction tool -- complements the other risk reduction and information tools available exclusively through PLE." FirstUse also has alliances with some impressive names, including the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Association of Internet Professionals, several legal and music Web sites and organizations and the International Web Masters Association. Just exactly how does FirstUse make the concept work? Well, the company creates a sequence of numbers called a "hash code" that can verify the binary coding of a software file without accessing its actual information. The company then time stamps the hash code and stores it in a database, creating a dated record. In fact, FirstUse itself doesn''t even know what''s in your file! You might think this is hugely expensive, but it really isn''t, unless you want to protect hundreds of ideas. Account setup is free and you get three free transactions. After that, prices start a $8 per file, and there are volume discounts if you just spew ideas like confetti. Be advised that this is NOT the same as obtaining a copyright, patent or a trademark. In fact, FirstUse itself says that it is not a substitute for such protections. However, "being able to prove what you conceived, when it was reduced to tangible form (such as text, audio, video, design or photo), what was developed at different stages, and documentation of who had access, can be the difference between wining or losing a dispute," FirstUse says. FirstUse.com licenses its time-stamping technology from Surety.com, a provider of digital record notarization services.