12.11.2008

“Starting Monday, November 10, 2008, the companies interested in providing temporal marking services may send ANC notifications on starting such activity. Temporal mark is necessary to authenticate documents and has practical applications in areas such as: electronic commerce, electronic signature, electronic notary activity, electronic archiving or electronic invoicing”, Liviu Nistoran, the President of ANC, declared on the occasion of the entry into force of Decision no. 896/2008 on the technical and methodological rules for the enforcement of Law no. 451/2004 regarding temporal marking.

Alongside the notification, the providers of temporal marking services have the obligation to communicate ANC information related to the security procedures to be used, measures to be applied for protecting the personal data, as well as any other data required by the Authority. Furthermore, the provider of temporal marking services must be a personal data operator, certified by the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing.

The providers must hold the financial means and the material, technical and human resources to guarantee the security, reliability and continuity of the services they offer, as well as the financial tools to cover the prejudices that might occur while carrying out the activities related to the temporal marking.

As well, the providers have the obligation to create and maintain an electronic register on temporal marks, to include all the temporal marks they issue. The register shall be available online, on the providers’ own websites.

The temporal mark is an electronic set of data, uniquely attached to an electronic document, which certifies that the respective document existed under the respective format at a given moment. For instance, temporal marking enables to check the moment of electronically signing an electronic document, to check the exact moment of performing different transactions in the e-commerce field or to certify the existence at a given moment of an artistic work protected by the copyright.

Decision no. 896/2008 on the technical and methodological rules for the enforcement of Law no. 451/2004 regarding temporal marking is published on the ANC website, and is available for publication here.