The patents

The architecture that ends deed fraud.

U.S. Patent No. 12,518,331, issued in January 2026, creates a permanent link between a paper document and a digital record that can't be altered later — established the moment the document is notarized. Anyone can later check the paper and the digital record against each other; if they don't match, the document is a fake. Additional patents pending apply the same idea to documents of every kind.

How it works

The unique-code bridge.

A notarized document is a piece of paper that records what happened when a notary checked someone's identity and watched them sign. For as long as notarization has existed, that piece of paper has been the only record of the event. If the paper is forged or the notary's stamp is faked, there's nothing to check it against. That's the gap fraud has always lived in.

Veritable's patent closes the gap by creating a second record at the same moment. As the document is being notarized, a unique code is generated — long, random, and tied to the verified identity of the signer, the contents of the document, and the time of signing. The code is printed on the paper itself. At the same time, the code is saved into a permanent digital ledger that no one can edit afterward, not even the notary.

From that point on, anyone can confirm the document is real. A county recorder, a title officer, a bank, a buyer years later, or a court reads the code on the paper, looks up the ledger entry for that code, and compares the two. They have to match. To forge a deed under this system, a fraudster would need to change both the paper and the digital ledger at the same time — and the ledger is built so that's essentially impossible.

Two records, one document, locked together the moment it becomes official.

Patent claims

Three independent claims.

Patent No. 12,518,331 has three independent claims, each covering a separate step in how the unique code works. The summaries below are for orientation only — the full claim text is on the public USPTO record.

  1. Generation

    How the unique code is created at the moment of notarization, tied to who the signer is, what the document says, and when the signing took place.

  2. Recording

    How the same code is printed on the paper and saved to a permanent digital record at the same time, creating two halves of one verifiable document.

  3. Verification

    How anyone later — a county recorder, a title officer, a bank, a buyer, a court — can confirm the document is real by comparing the code on the paper with the code in the digital record.

Scope

Where the patent applies.

U.S. Patent No. 12,518,331 claims the unique-code architecture that binds a physical document to a verifiable digital record at the moment of formal attestation. Commercial use of that architecture — in any of the document categories below — requires a license from Veritable Data Solutions.

  1. Property deeds — grants, quitclaims, and warranty deeds
  2. Mortgages and deeds of trust
  3. Releases of lien and full reconveyances
  4. Powers of attorney
  5. Affidavits and sworn declarations
  6. Trust instruments
  7. Notarized wills and testamentary documents
  8. Notarized court filings and verified pleadings
  9. Apostilled documents and international authentication chains
  10. Vital records — birth, death, and marriage certificates
  11. Naturalization and immigration certifications
  12. Architect and engineer professional seals on construction plans and permits
  13. Title insurance commitments and policies
  14. Bank-witnessed signature cards and loan closing documents
  15. Diplomas, transcripts, and registrar attestations
  16. Corporate resolutions and board attestations
  17. Chain-of-custody attestations — evidence logs, prescription manifests, customs declarations

Provisional patents

The same architecture, across documents of every kind.

The principle behind Patent No. 12,518,331 — that a document's integrity has to be secured the moment it becomes official — applies to far more than deeds. Two provisional filings extend the same approach to other kinds of documents, with additional filings in preparation.

Remote online notarization (RON). Some documents are notarized over a video call rather than in person, and they never exist on paper — they're digital from start to finish. That changes the problem: there's no physical document to print a code on. The provisional filing adapts the same approach to fully digital documents, keeping the same two-record protection.

Construction industry seals. Architects and engineers put official seals on building plans, permits, and certifications. Those seals carry legal weight, and they get forged for the same reasons deeds do — to make something appear authorized when it isn't. The provisional filing applies the same approach to professional seals, so a permit or a stamped plan can be verified the same way a deed can.

Both provisional filings are currently being revised with patent counsel.

Public record

The patent is part of the public record.

The full text of Patent No. 12,518,331 — claims, specification, drawings, and prosecution history — is on file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Licensees and their counsel are welcome to review the public record as part of their due diligence.

View the patent on Google Patents →

Long view

A foundation for property rights, anywhere it is built.

The reach of the patent extends beyond the United States. In The Mystery of Capital, the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that developing economies cannot build durable prosperity without trustworthy systems of property ownership — that the absence of clean, verifiable title records is a structural cause of economic stagnation across much of the world.

The unique-code architecture is exactly the kind of infrastructure that closes that gap. In principle it could be deployed in jurisdictions that today have no equivalent of a county recorder, giving them — for the first time — a way for ordinary people to own land in a form a bank can lend against. That is a long-horizon application rather than a near-term commercial focus, but it is one of the reasons the architecture's scope is worth thinking about beyond the deeds it most obviously protects.

Licensing

Operators in title insurance, notarization, document recording, and adjacent industries.

Veritable Data Solutions licenses its patent to companies across the document authentication industry. We're open to straight license agreements, partnerships, and joint ventures — whatever structure makes commercial sense for both sides.

Discuss licensing