Preservation Of Evidence Notarized Legal Issues, The Field Of Information

With rapid development of high-tech, there occur occasionally cases of encroachment on the rights in the information field. In this regard collecting evidences of encroachments is of vital importance in settlement of any future dispute arising therefrom. Public notary agencies are therefore playing a more and more important role in the process of evidence collection.It is the duty of public notary agencies to testify the authenticity and lawfulness of legal acts, instruments and facts. Notarization of evidence preservation plays particularly an important role in terms of legal effect of evidence authentication. Over the recent years, apart from perpetuation of witness testimony, written evidence, material evidence, audio-video site recordings including action process recordings, there come also a growing need for public notarization of evidence preservation with respect to intellectual property right, pull-down and relocation of real estate, and online data and information. Notarization of evidence perpetuation is a means now frequently used in legal proceedings and becomes an important and integral part of lawsuit evidence.However, as China's notarization law and stipulations on notarization procedures are too general and little study has been conducted on the theory of notarization in the circle of law practice, it has led to a situation where there has been almost no specific rule for local notaries public to turn to in the notarization process of evidence preservation. Under such circumstances, notaries public actually follow the rule of what is called "discretionary authentication" in routine practice. Consequently, regarding notarization of evidence preservation, those procedures applied by notaries public on case filing, review and inspection, and certification issuance vary from locality to locality, even the wordings used in such notarial certifications are widely different.The author tries to deal with the issue from the viewpoint of evidence preservation notarization within the information domain, while bearing in mind the status quo of domestic notarial practice and taking an international and development point of view. By reference to new development by western countries represented by the US in notarization system in the information domain, while focusing on seeking new theory in evidence perpetuation and discussing problems confronted in practice, the author, in consideration of the current status of notarial practice in China, puts forth proposals aimed at handling problems in evidence preservations with stress on the fields of telecommunication, internet and computer software.