Patent ID: 8032744

Claim:
A method for generating a self-authenticating digital document comprising: receiving or generating a digital document at a computing device; generating a digital signature using the computing device, wherein the digital signature is generated from signature data and wherein the signature data comprises the digital document; receiving at the computing device certificate chain data, where certificate chain data is a subset of a chain of m+1 digital certificates issued by m certification authorities, wherein m≧1, wherein the chain comprises a self-signed 1 st (root) level certificate, k intermediate level certificates, and an (m+1) th -level certificate that corresponds to the digital key used to generate the digital signature, and wherein for 1<j≦m+1, a j th level certificate is signed by a digital certificate key corresponding to the (j−1) th certificate in the chain; receiving at the computing device certificate revocation information corresponding to the m certification authorities wherein the certificate revocation information identifies digital certificates that have been revoked by the m certification authorities; and generating digital timestamp data using the computing device, wherein the digital timestamp data is generated by applying at least one secure digital timestamp to a record comprising the digital document, the digital signature, the chain data, and the revocation information, and wherein the at least one secure digital timestamp comprises a digital representation of the record cryptographically bound to a digital representation of a current time.