E-business platforms, such as Alibaba and Taobao, dissolves the limitation in time and geographical location of traditional businesses, becoming the fastest, the most convenient and the most economical medium of economic exchange. It is increasingly influencing and changing the traditional economic functioning methods and our lives. However, along with the rapid development of the Internet and related industries, a series of associated legal issues and disputes have been mounting as well, among which online infringement, including infringement on trademark rights online, appears as the most prominent problem. If one wishes to use legal means to protect one’s lawful rights from infringement online, preserving evidence for notarization to maintain its authority, granted by laws, is essential and is becoming one of the effective legal means to prevent and resolve online infringement dispute.

1. What is preservation of evidence for notarization?

Preservation of evidence for notarization refers to the notarizations institutions’ confirmation and attainment of evidence that is directly related to the applicants, easy to be lost or changed, or difficult to preserve, outside of litigations and applied by citizens, legal persons, or other organizations. The evidence downloaded and printed by the involved parties themselves cannot easily possessed effective authority. Hence, we can lawfully apply to notarization institutions based on the actual events for our client. The preservation for notarization of evidence that is related to the applicants and is collected and confirmed by them would become that best way to provide effective evidence in the later solution of disputes for the applicants. 

2. How to obtain the preservation of evidence for notarization

Example case: Assume Company 1 is a remote-producing company and is the owner of trademark A. When Company 1 is looking through the website of another remote-producing company, Company 2, Company 1 discovered that several models of remote products on the website use trademark A directly or are similar products to Company 1’s products associated with trademark A. Also, Company 1 has never authorized Company 2 to manufacture and sell this type of products under the trademark. Company 1 then prepares to file a litigation against Company 2 and needs to provide effective evidence of Company 2 manufacturing and selling the remotes under Company 1’s name. This attainment of evidence can be realized, exactly, through the application to notarization agencies for online preservation of evidence, or through purchase of notarization. Before accepting the application, the agencies will require Company 1 to submit a written request and confirm relevant information, including the main assets of Company 1 and the infringement on rights asserted by Company 1. After the acceptance of the application, notary publics will start online research with the applicants. Online research and attainment of evidence are usually processed on the computers at the agencies. The notary publics need to perform onsite supervision, and printing and photo taking tasks for all the operations on computers, the time of these operations, the order of them, and the duplication of the content displayed on the computer screen. After completing the attainment of evidence, notary publics will provide the applicants with the legally effective online evidence preservation notarization certificates on the basis of authenticity and lawfulness. This is will solidify the evidence for the later efforts of right protection.