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How ExhibitStampPro Stamps Court Exhibits: Architecture and Format Specification

June 14, 2026 · ExhibitStampPro Team · 6 min read

This post describes the technical architecture of ExhibitStampPro's PDF exhibit stamping system. We are publishing this as a complete technical disclosure of our methods, establishing prior art as of the publication date above. All described methods and formats are original work developed by ExhibitStampPro Ltd. beginning in June 2026.

Background

Litigation attorneys routinely need to stamp PDF documents as court exhibits before filing. The standard format requires a labeled box identifying the party, exhibit designation, and case number — placed consistently on every page of every document. Doing this manually across dozens or hundreds of exhibits per matter is time-consuming and error-prone.

ExhibitStampPro automates this process using a client-side PDF manipulation library (pdf-lib) running in a Next.js server environment. The stamped output is deterministic, court-format compliant, and reproducible — running the same stamp operation on the same document produces byte-for-byte identical output.

1. Exhibit stamp format specification

We define a stamp format called us-federal-box-v2. It consists of a bordered rectangular box applied to the bottom-right corner of each page of a PDF document.

Page 1 — Primary stamp

The primary stamp is applied to the first page of the document only.

Dimensions and position:

  • Box width: 130 points
  • Box height: 92 points
  • Position: bottom-right corner
  • Right margin: 36 points from page right edge
  • Bottom margin: 36 points from page bottom edge
  • Border: 1.5pt solid, color RGB(0.784, 0.204, 0.102)

Content layout (top to bottom):

  1. Party label — the designating party in uppercase (e.g. PLAINTIFF'S, DEFENDANT'S, JOINT) — Helvetica Bold, 7pt, centered, red
  2. Horizontal rule — 0.75pt, 6pt inset from box edges
  3. EXHIBIT label — Helvetica Bold, 7pt, centered
  4. Exhibit label — the exhibit identifier (e.g. A, PLF-001, 42) — Helvetica Bold, 36pt for 1–2 character labels, 22pt for 3+ characters, centered, red
  5. Case number — Case No. [number] — Helvetica Regular, 5.5pt, centered, gray

Background: White fill at 0.97 opacity, preserving underlying document content.

Pages 2 and beyond — Continuation stamp

A smaller continuation stamp is applied to every page after the first.

Dimensions and position:

  • Box width: 92 points
  • Box height: 32 points
  • Same right and bottom margins
  • Border: 1pt solid

Content layout:

  1. Party label — Helvetica Bold, 5.5pt, left-aligned, 5pt left padding
  2. EXHIBIT [label] — Helvetica Bold, 7pt, left-aligned
  3. Case number — Helvetica Regular, 5pt, left-aligned, gray

2. Dual-path storage architecture

A central design requirement is that the original uploaded document must never be overwritten. This enables unlimited re-stamping — the system always stamps from the original, producing clean output without accumulated artifacts.

We implement this with two separate storage paths per exhibit:

original_file_url — Set once at upload time. Points to the original PDF as uploaded by the user. This path is immutable after creation. All stamp operations read from this path.

stamped_file_url — Written by each stamp operation. Points to the most recent stamped version. Overwritten with each re-stamp.

Storage path convention:

[matter_id]/[exhibit_id]/original.pdf    ← never changes
[matter_id]/[exhibit_id]/stamped_v2.pdf  ← updated on each stamp

The stamp operation flow:

1. Read from original_file_url
2. Load PDF bytes into pdf-lib
3. Apply us-federal-box-v2 stamp to each page
4. Write result to stamped_file_url (upsert: true)
5. Update exhibit record:
   stamp_version = "us-federal-box-v2"
   stamped_at    = current timestamp
   status        = "stamped"

The stamp_version string is stored alongside each exhibit record, enabling future format migrations. When a new format version is released, the system identifies all exhibits stamped with previous formats and offers batch re-stamping.

3. Court readiness scoring model

Each matter has a court readiness score from 0 to 100, representing how complete and filing-ready the exhibit package is.

Score components per exhibit:

| Component | Points | Condition | |---|---|---| | Exhibit stamped | +15 | stamp_version is set | | Stamp is current version | +5 | stamp_version = "us-federal-box-v2" | | Case number set | +10 | Not a placeholder value | | Jurisdiction set | +10 | matters.jurisdiction is not null | | Party designation set | +10 | matters.party_designation is set |

The matter-level score is the average of all exhibit scores, capped at 100. A matter with all exhibits stamped with the current format and all metadata complete reaches 100% — displayed as "Court Ready ✓".

4. Jurisdiction formatting engine

ExhibitStampPro pre-loads formatting rules for all 94 United States federal district courts, plus the Federal Court of Canada, Australian federal and state courts (NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA), and UK High Court divisions including the Technology and Construction Court and Commercial Court.

Each jurisdiction record contains:

  • Full court name
  • Standard abbreviation (e.g. S.D.N.Y., C.D. Cal., D. Del.)
  • Applicable stamp format rules
  • Supported label formats (sequential numeric, alphabetic, or custom)

The jurisdiction is set at the matter level and applies to all exhibits within that matter. Changing the jurisdiction and re-stamping applies the new court's rules to every exhibit automatically.

5. Original file preservation guarantee

When a user uploads a PDF, the system:

  1. Generates a UUID for the exhibit
  2. Stores the file at [matter_id]/[exhibit_id]/original.pdf in a private storage bucket
  3. Sets original_file_url to this path and never updates it again
  4. Sets stamped_file_url to null
  5. Sets status to pending

This guarantee is enforced at the API layer — the stamp route reads exclusively from original_file_url and writes exclusively to the stamped path. No code path overwrites the original.

6. Stamp idempotency

Applying the same stamp operation to the same document twice produces identical output. Stamp parameters are drawn from exhibit and matter records, which do not change between stamp operations unless explicitly edited. This property ensures that re-produced copies of an exhibit are byte-for-byte identical to the originally stamped version, assuming no metadata changes — a property relevant to document authentication in legal proceedings.

Disclosure statement

The methods described in this post — the us-federal-box-v2 format specification, the dual-path storage architecture, the court readiness scoring model, and the jurisdiction formatting engine — are hereby publicly disclosed by ExhibitStampPro Ltd. as of June 14, 2026.

This disclosure is made to establish prior art and ensure these methods remain freely available for use in litigation support software. ExhibitStampPro Ltd. does not assert patent rights over these methods and does not intend to do so.

For questions about this disclosure, contact contact@exhibitstamppro.com.

ExhibitStampPro™ is a trademark application pending at the USPTO (filed June 11, 2026). The software described in this post is available at exhibitstamppro.com.

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