The “Erlangen Notary Model” was the most secure form of storage for all donor treatment data until the new sperm donor registry law.

All couples who had a child from donor sperm treatment received a notarized certificate with the name of the child, the parents and the donor’s code. These documents and the donor’s data were kept for 100 years at the Martini/Siegler notary’s office in Erlangen if the child was born before July 1, 2018. This ensures that every child can learn the identity of its donor at any time in its life. The “Erlanger Notarmodell” was the first documentation model of this kind in Germany. Both the Bavarian State Medical Association and the German Federal Medical Association found it to be compatible with the guidelines for assisted reproduction. The “Erlangen Notary Model” served the German government as a model for the official register to be established at the DIMDI in Cologne (since 2023 BfArM, Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, Bonn) as of July 1, 2018, for the documentation of all data on donor sperm treatment and ultimately to ensure that donor children can learn the identity of their donors in a long-term and secure manner.