Innovative use of blockchain technology to manage progress of evidence will help transform the security of legal cases

CaseLines, the leading global provider of digital evidence management, has today announced it has filed an application to patent the use of blockchain within its evidence management platform.

By recording each step of the evidence bundle upload process through to being made available to a user as a chain of transactions on the blockchain, the validity of a document can be recorded and presented to interested parties.

The purpose of using blockchain to store the transactions in each journey is to ensure that the details of each stage in the journey can be verified against the document being viewed. Blockchain will be used within CaseLines product to store the transactions in the digital journey of an item of evidence within digital justice systems globally and is the first of its kind in the world.

This move would give digital justice systems unparalleled levels of security and trust in the process of handling all types of evidence. Crucially while blockchain is a public artifact where each transaction in the digital ledger is permanently recorded the inspection of the blockchain would not reveal evidence and will contain only evidence IDs and hash codes.

This means once a piece of evidence is entered into the system, there can be no possibility of records being altered or falsified. It will thereby eliminate the possibility that evidential material submitted to court can be repudiated, as the validity of the document presented will be irrefutable.

The transactions described in the patent application have been developed using CaseLines’ ten-years of experience of digital evidence management and technical expertise, to invent the correct approach for tying blockchain technology to the challenge of digital evidence security.

Paul Sachs, CTO and founder of CaseLines, said: “This is a groundbreaking development that will revolutionise the way the justice system operates by bringing it firmly into the digital age. CaseLines does not only make the delivery of justice more efficient, both in time and cost, but now makes the provenance of evidence wholly trustworthy.”

“CaseLines brings together cutting edge legal tech expertise with over ten years of experience of the judicial process. We uniquely provide a system that uses a proven set of transactions to display evidence, with the added irrefutability of the blockchain.”

Mr Sachs added: “It is my vision that in the future, the interconnectivity of the global judiciary through blockchain will ensure fair justice worldwide. We are inviting different organisations to participate in a global judicial evidence blockchain to deliver irrefutable evidence to all digital justice systems. CaseLines Digital Evidence Management Platform will be the first system to take full advantage of the CaseLines Digital Evidence Blockchain. We are looking forward to partnering with Justice Ministries and Law firms worldwide to embrace this new technology.”

CaseLines’ digital evidence management platform reduces the time, effort and cost in the secure preparation, collaboration and court room presentation of legal evidence bundles. This patent would mean CaseLines will be the only company able to use blockchain in the digital evidence process.

The company predicts that the move will bring them one step further to their mission of eliminating all paper from the trial environment by replacing it with a cost-effective secure evidence management solution suitable for cases of any size. CaseLines is already in use in courts around the world, including the UK and the UAE.