Hi Tom,

> Have you done research how much protection a time stamp will give you in real
> life, say, you discovered someone is selling products using your design. ?

Very good question! I believe that a time stamp when using in combination
with digital signatures* can show third parties that you or someone else
has done a (published) work at that time. Should it come to court etc.
you have a non-fakeable proof that you did that design at that time.

We in Europe have the eIDAS regulation for digital signatures, which
allows people to sign digitally documents where the signatures are
equal like real handmade signatures.

People worldwide can then verify those qualified digital signatures on
.pdf documents with either the free Adobe Reader DC or with a web
based European service.

Sure, the question remains if a court would trust a honest little
freelancer or a well know company, which also "invented" that
design at a claimed earlier date, which they probably can't proof,
like i could with my procedure.

Regards
Stefan

P.S If you like i can prepare a little .pdf with a qualified digital signature,
time stamped with an eIDAS conform time stamping service, so that
you can see how those documents look like and what result a verification
shows, when using the free Acrobat Reader DC or the web based service.