Kevin Ahern in his Science Magazine article discussed how the e-TimeStamp service began by supporting the medical researcher.
Below are a few quotes from that article.
"Protection of intellectual property depends on establishing precedence of discovery, traditionally by the witnessing and signing of a researcher's notebooks by another party. As data and notebooks evolve from paper products to the virtual world, a new way to verify the exact content of original computer documents and to establish the creation date is required.
... This design has several advantages: Fingerprints are made on the user's personal computer, so no copies of the file are transferred and, because rigorous encryption algorithms are employed, information security is maintained. ..."
