Paperless and Inkless Signature: Will it Stand In Court?

Digital signature is the essential core or the heart of paperless society and digital signature legislation is the "tipping point" in the campaign towards paperless.

Imagine the following situations:

Case 1: John Doe applied for membership in one the prestigious members club in town. His passport and other personal documents are scanned and stored in a document repository. His application is approved, and he can enjoy the privileges of a member.

A year later, someone disputed the authenticity of the document. They started to question the validity of the electronic document that was previously scanned. It is not valid because the electronic document is not admissible as evidence, it could be a fabricated document or tampered that cannot stand the test of legal scrutiny.

Without a law that guarantees the validity of electronic documents, John Doe or the Member's club chance of winning a case before the bench is slim.

Case 2: Company A and Company B entered into a contract for company A to buy from B a piece of land worth $1M and for B to deliver the said land after a lapse of one year. Company A clicked the submit button for approval and company B clicked accept button, the witnesses also clicked on the witnessed by button as well as the notary officer clicked on the button that says "notarized". All parties received an electronic copy of the contract. It says "This is a computer generated document no signature is required"

A year later the land is not delivered and the case landed in court. One of the parties argued that the contract is void from the start because it does not conform to the provisions of the statute of fraud which says for certain contract with amount greater than say for example '$5000.00" to be valid it must be in writing, signed by both parties and they also swear before a notary public that the contents are true, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.

Without a law that guarantees the non-repudiation of an electronic transaction or contract, and without a legal framework for enforcing it, company A's case in civil court is dead on arrival, or it will be a long and costly battle in the court of law.

I said, its a tipping point whenever a country has already enacted a law, such as the "Electronic Transaction Act" of Singapore, that will guarantee the legality of electronic documents and the validity of paperless and inkless signature. The reason is quite obvious, some companies or even individuals can be swayed to go paperless because they know that their rights are protected by law. Another reason is, sometimes laws or regulatory requirements dictate where companies and individuals are supposed to be going. The digital signature law adds more weight and pressure for societies to accept paperless initiatives.

I need more cases or scenerios to build up. This will enable the law makers make intelligent decision and come out with quality legislation.

Any volunteers? I believe we need people to voice out more possible cases of disputes arising out of the digital signature law or so called "Electronic Transaction Act" and introduce incremental improvement.

By the way, here is an article about the signing of the "Millennium Digital Commerce Act of 2000" written sometime on 30 June 2000 from Domino News:





By Eric B. Parizo, Asst. News Editor


U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, more commonly known as the digital signature bill.

The new law will fully legalize contracts signed over the Internet, using public and private key-encryption technology, primarily featuring XML code, to identify users by unique digital signatures.

Digital signature technology is nothing new to Lotus Notes and Domino users, but Domino product marketing manager Paris Vakili said the government is catching on to what her company has known for some time.

"With a lot of e-commerce activity, it would be good to have a definitive, around the clock ability to secure documents and take advantage of technology that exists today," Vakili said.
Notes and Domino users have had the ability to include digital signatures within documents for over six years.

The technology works like this: A user can add a signature to a document, using the high-level encryption within the Notes/Domino environment.

If the document is sent in or as a mail message, another user can then digitally verify the document's signature by examining the sender's private key information and the electronic trail, or hash, that is sent along with the document.

Unlike other applications, Vakili said the way Notes and Domino are designed, users can utilize digital signature technology at the most basic levels.

"I believe that most applications do provide digital signatures, but again, with Notes and Domino, because our collaborative environment, you could actually take this level of security to the field and section and document level," she said.

The new law has been seen mainly as a boost for e-commerce at a time when many dot-coms are struggling. Domino users will find it beneficial as well.

For instance, if multiple Notes users in varied locations needed to securely sign a database document, not only does the environment allow for it, but the gray area of legality has also been removed.

"If you're creating a workflow application, your database designer would be able to take advantage of this technology and design the workflow application around it," Vakili said.
While viruses are a constant threat, and some speculate the new law does not take virus attacks into consideration, Vakili said Notes users have few reasons to worry.

"Actually, [with] Lotus Notes, because of our integrated security... any virus would not be able to work around the security, in a sense that it would be able to prevent any mail message from being validated," she said.

Mobile security is also of little concern. Mobile devices with the ability to access a regular Domino server can not only submit and receive digital signatures, but also feature the same virus protection.


Today, the big question is, what happend to Lotus Notes/Domino now? Im just curious. :)