Bernstein and the Max Planck Digital Library believe the blockchain and other decentralized technologies will have a strong impact on the way knowledge will be registered and shared in the future to the benefits of science, art, innovation and society.

On this shared belief, the two organizations agreed to run a project that will grant scientists of selected Max Planck institutes access to the Bernstein web application. Participants will be able to register their scientific achievements on the Bitcoin blockchain and complement these blockchain certificates with digital timestamps issued by European Union and Chinese authorities.

The present collaboration may evolve in multiple directions, including the design and implementation of a defensive publishing service combining blockchain certificates and IPFS decentralized data storage. This unique disclosure service will efficiently establish prior art proving both the time of the disclosure and the location of the now publicly available IP asset.