Thus, it is hard to prove that the data was not added to, deleted from, or in some way tampered with. Corroboration is also required. Small segments of data can, of course, be printed out and permanently affixed in a standard laboratory notebook, but for large volumes of data the only recourse is to print them out and bind them. Hopefully, better encryption methods will allow researchers to rely on the integrity of their computer-stored data. But for now, the courts only recognize a written printout that has been properly signed and dated and corroborated by a witness, as described above.
Disputes sometimes arise over who first made an invention.
This issue is usually decided on the written evidence kept by the parties to the dispute. U.S. patent practice places a premium on witnessed records when two or more parties claim the same invention. But for the lack of witnessed notebooks describing his device, the man known as the inventor of the telephone would have been a talented mechanic named Daniel Drawbaugh. Although Drawbaugh was able to testify that he had talked over a crude telephone long before Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent application in 1875, Drawbaugh had not a scrap of paper dating and describing the invention. The Supreme Court rejected Drawbaugh's claim of prior inventorship in 1888 by a narrow margin of four votes to three.