Legal Regulation of International Commercial Electronic Contracts. Technological and Legal Aspects of Electronic Signature

Abstract

In the modern realities of converting document flow to the digital plane, the issues of validity of contracts concluded in electronic form, as well as the conditions for recognizing an electronic signature, are of particular importance. In this regard, the authors turn to the study of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts of 2005, as well as other international trade agreements to clarify their applicability to cross-border contracts concluded in electronic form.In the paper, the authors raise the question of the validity of an electronic cross-border transaction that falls under the regulation of the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods of 1980, the USSR reservation to which on the inadmissibility of concluding a contract not in writing, but in any form, continues to apply. In this regard, the authors explore the possibility of interpreting article 13 of the 1980 Vienna Convention containing the definition of the "written form", outside of the general rule of interpretation of the provisions of the 1980 Vienna Convention provided for in article 7.Based on the comparative analysis of national and international legal norms, norms of soft law regulating electronic documents, the authors reveal a number of problems arising from the lack of specificity of the mechanism of recognition of foreign electronic signatures in Russia and put forward proposals for their solution. To this end, the authors explore the possibilities of developing international standards for the compatibility of technological algorithms for electronic digital signatures using an asymmetric scheme, based on which foreign certificates of electronic signature keys can be recognized.