For screenwriters
Protect a screenplay before submitting it
A screenplay circulates long before anything is shot: contests, festivals, readers, producers, co-writers. Incipite anchors your file's fingerprint on the Bitcoin blockchain in thirty seconds and issues a dated certificate — solid prior art evidence, verifiable by anyone, without your screenplay ever leaving your computer. A couple of pounds per deposit, and it never expires.
Real feedback“It is clearly designed with writers and their needs in mind.”
Ataollah
What you are actually exposed to
- Every submission makes you warrant originality. Sundance, The Black List and most contests have you declare that the material is yours and infringes nothing. You state it — but what documents that statement?
- A screenplay that has been read is no longer private. Between a contest, two readers and a producer, your PDF has travelled across machines you do not control.
- Similarities happen, and rarely in bad faith. Two neighbouring projects surface the same year. The question stops being who copied and becomes who can date.
- A co-writing dispute is settled on dates. Who wrote what, and when, before the partnership went its separate ways.
Scenario
A screenwriter finishes the third draft of her feature. She sends it to two international contests, to a reader, then to a producer she met at a film market. Four copies of her file now live somewhere other than her desk. Nothing attests that this exact file existed on that exact day — only her word, and an email timestamp a sending server can backdate.
What people usually do, and what it really covers
None of these is a bad option. They simply do not all answer the same question — and two of them share a property nobody thinks to check: they expire.
| Method | Cost | Duration | What it solves — and its limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| WGA Registry (West / East) | $20-25 | 5 years, material then destroyed | The industry reflex in the US. The Registry states plainly that it bestows no statutory protections: it is a dated, self-declared record — and it lapses. |
| US Copyright Office | $45 | Permanent | The only one that unlocks an infringement action in the US, and statutory damages. Incipite does not replace it. Average processing time observed: about four months. |
| SACD deposit (France) | €15 | 5 years, renewable | The French reference for audiovisual works. Priced per deposit and renewable: twelve drafts over three years is no longer €15. |
| Emailing it to yourself | Free | — | The timestamp belongs to a mail server, and an attachment's metadata can be edited. So-called poor man's copyright has never carried weight on its own. |
| Incipite | A couple of pounds | No expiry | A fingerprint anchored in the Bitcoin blockchain, verifiable by a third party without going through us. Replaces neither the Copyright Office nor the WGA: it sits alongside them, and covers the gap. |
The point that changes things for a screenwriter
A conventional registration is priced per work and expires. A screenplay, meanwhile, gets rewritten — ten, twelve, fifteen times. What matters is not protecting a title, it is being able to date every state of your text, and having that date hold in twenty years without anyone having remembered to renew anything.
How it works, in three steps
- 1Export the version you are about to send. The PDF from Final Draft, Fade In, Celtx or a Fountain export is exactly right. Certify the very file you will hand over: the fingerprint covers that file, byte for byte.
- 2Drop it on Incipite. The SHA-256 fingerprint is computed inside your browser — the screenplay never travels to our servers. Only the fingerprint is transmitted.
- 3Keep the certificate with your draft. You get a one-page PDF naming the work, its type, its version, the UTC date and the fingerprint, with a public verification link.
Before you send it out
Austin Film Festival, the Nicholl Fellowship and most contests judge blind — title only on the cover page, no name anywhere. Do not attach the certificate to those submissions, and do not add a line to the cover page: the verification link names the author. The certificate is meant for non-anonymous sends — producer, agent, co-production, market — and for your own file.
What Incipite does not do
- No contest requires it, and we will not pretend otherwise. The Nicholl states that a WGA or Library of Congress number is acceptable but not required; Austin strongly suggests it. A certificate does not open a door: it documents the originality warranty you sign anyway.
- It is not a copyright registration. For serious US exploitation, registration with the Copyright Office remains what conditions an infringement action and statutory damages.
- It does not prove you are the author. It proves one exact file existed at one exact date and that you had it in hand. That is a different thing, and it is already a great deal.
- It does not protect an idea. A plot, a pitch, a concept are not protectable; their expression is.
Where the law stands
Article 41(1) of the EU eIDAS Regulation forbids a court from dismissing an electronic time stamp on the sole ground that it is electronic: it must be assessed on its merits. In March 2025 the Marseille court held that blockchain timestamps were admissible and sufficient to establish copyright ownership. The case law in detail →
Frequently asked
+Should I certify every draft?
No, and it would be money wasted. Certify the versions that matter: the one you send to a contest, the one you hand a producer, the one that follows a substantial rewrite. A series of dated deposits does document a creative process over time — which is what a court looks at on questions of authorship.
+Do you read my screenplay?
We never receive it. The SHA-256 fingerprint is computed inside your browser; sixty-four hexadecimal characters are all that reaches us. We could not reconstruct a single line of your text from that.
+What if Incipite disappears?
Your proof survives. It rests on OpenTimestamps, an open protocol in use since 2016. The .ots receipt you download verifies with the official client, without us.
+Can I certify a series bible, a treatment, a synopsis?
Yes — you pick the type of work at deposit time, and it appears on the certificate. The file format is irrelevant.
+My screenplay is co-written. How does that work?
The certificate carries the depositor's name, and that identity is self-declared — we do not verify identity documents, and the certificate says so. For co-writing, the safest route is for each author to deposit the version they hold.
+How long does the proof last?
Indefinitely. There is nothing to renew and nothing further to pay: the fingerprint is written into the Bitcoin blockchain, which does not expire.
3 free certifications for life · No credit card · File stays 100% local
Protect my screenplay →Solid prior art evidence — not a substitute for US Copyright Office registration or a national deposit.
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