California Appeals Court Rejects Esigned Petitions

July 7, 2011

The San Francisco based First District Court of Appeal upheld the San Mateo trial judge’s ruling that Michael Ni, a founder of Verafirma, did not submit a valid signed initiative petition when he attempted to submit his petition on a USB flash drive. As quoted at NBCBayArea.com:

Justice Sandra Margulies wrote, “The Legislature did not anticipate the use of electronic signatures when it drafted the statute and has since taken no action that can be construed as approving them for this purpose. “

“The Legislature…is the proper body to determine whether and how to incorporate this technology, with its new risks and equal promise, into the process of initiative endorsement.”

This is ruling stands in marked contrast to the Utah Supreme Court ruling in an earlier post.  In this case the Utah judges ruled that by not making rules regarding the use of electronic signatures and by endorsing UETA, as well as “liberal interpretation” of the nominating petition they implicitly allowed electronic nominating petition signatures collected on a web site.  This ruling led Utah to pass SB165 explicitly forbidding electronic signatures for ballot initiatives or nominating petitions.

These cases certainly bring up an issue.  Will electronic signatures result in better government?  The LA Times talks about it in today’s op-ed piece, but I think that the discussion is just beginning.  What do you think?

Leave a Comment » | electronic signature, esignature | Permalink
Posted by Mike Ambrose

Sue the B@57&%!

July 5, 2011

I was browsing the internet recently and found that a couple of Esignature providers have ended up in the crosshairs of a company that provides guaranteed email delivery services.  Rpost recently announced that they are suing RightSignature and RightSignature customer Farmers Insurance as well as Docusign for violating Rpost patents related to guaranteed email delivery.

Rpost clearly spends a lot of money  protecting their IP as you can see from this page featuring all of the infringement suits in process.  If you look a little harder you can find even more, one of the companies that isn’t listed but was also sued in East Texas is Amazon.com.

These lawsuits also show the mythical status that East Texas courts have for patent lawuits.  RightSignature (Santa Barbara), Farmer’s Insurance (Los Angeles) and Rpost (Los Angeles) all have their principal place of business within a couple of hours of each other, so why have a trial in East Texas?

This tactic is so common that a local Tyler Texas directory site even has a post on it: East Texas and Patent Trolling.   Isn’t the US patent system grand?

Leave a Comment » | electronic document, electronic signature, esignature | Permalink
Posted by Mike Ambrose

Legal Esignatures for Elections

March 10, 2011

Electronic signatures have obvious applications to government.  One area that is evolving rapidly is the election system at the core of the US democratic government.  The internet has already had dramatic impact on the practice of politics, and electronic signatures combined with electronic documents and social networks seem destined to change politics and and policy in ways that we are only now beginning to comprehend.  Recent court cases are setting precedents for the role of electronic signatures in US elections, we will highlight a couple in this post.

Last summer Utah’s Supreme Court ruled that electronic signatures on a petition to nominate a gubernatorial candidate must be honored.  The court overruled the state’s election commission and required that signatures on an online nominating petition be accepted, see Anderson v. Bell.  As a result of this ruling Mr. Farley Anderson was listed on the ballot for Utah governor in 2010.  While Mr Anderson was not successful in his campaign to become the governor of Utah this ruling is likely to have significant impact on electronic signature gathering in elections in Utah and beyond.

Meanwhile a case in California is wending its way through the courts.  Michael Ni, a founder of Verafirma, submitted an electronically stored petition containing his electronic signature to the San Mateo County Elections Office.  Verafirma is an electronic signature technology company focused on use of electronic signatures in politics.  His submission was rejected by the elections office and the rejection was upheld by the Superior Court in San Mateo County.  This is now being appealed at the state Court of Appeals and will probably be heard soon.

Briefs have been filed on behalf of Mr. Ni by the Asian American Action Fund, Citizens in Charge, the Humane Society of the United States, the National Taxpayers Union, the Electronic Signature and Records Association, Antonio Gonzalez, and Joe Trippi.  Links to many of the filings and briefs can be found on Verafirma’s Twitter feed.

Verafirma believes that the use of electronic signatures can dramatically reduce the cost of qualifying ballot initiatives, encourage more citizen involvement and increase the quality of legislation submitted to voters.   This seems reasonable and  I think that the effects of reducing friction and increasing participation in our democratic process could be staggering.  What will a democracy of the late 21st century look like?

3 Comments | digital signature, electronic document, electronic signature, esignature | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Mike Ambrose

State Government Electronic Signature Guidelines

June 3, 2009

Somebody pointed out to me that the state of Minnesota has guidelines/considerations for deploying electronic signatures, Electronic Records Management Guidelines – Electronic and Digital Signatures.  I may add this to my sidebar. Much of this is discussed on other pages or posts on this blog.

Utah, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, California, Nebraska and Texas have all adopted electronic record and signature guidelines where they have chosen to license or register certificate authorities to do business with the state. In many cases they have updated laws that specifically required handwritten signatures as a response to their states ratification of UETA.

I am not sure how well they deal with the distribution aspect of issuing credentials, this has proven to be a challenge for the federal government as well when trying to deploy credentials for FDA and other governmental applications.  In fact, FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11 on Electronic Signatures and Records, approved in 1997, is still not being enforced and when enforcement commences it is likely to be relatively lax.

As I have stated on other postings and papers this is still the crux of the problem.  This has led governments to adopt an ad-hoc array of electronic signature methodologies with some success but has thwarted ubiquitous adoption of electronic signatures government.  If people have any updates or success stories in this area I would love to hear them.

2 Comments | digital signature, electronic signature | Permalink
Posted by Mike Ambrose

How Green are Esignatures?

May 26, 2009

This just out in the Ankara Daily News:  E-signatures save forests!

“According to the Consumer Protection Law, the processes for warranty papers and after-sale service papers have been done via electronic media since Jan. 1, 2008.

In 2008, as a result, 2.6 million signatures were not scribbled on paper in 54,214 transactions, thus saving 1.9 million pages of A4 size paper, which weighs 9.4 tons. This amount saved the felling of 1,600 trees, which equals 8 square kilometers of forestland. It also prevents 3,382 tons of greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere.”

Interesting math as it seems to assume that the documents are never printed, maybe a good assumption for this category of document.

1 Comment | electronic document, electronic signature, esignature | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Mike Ambrose

Georgian version of ESIGN “most fair and effective law”

February 10, 2009

Who says that this is just about streamlining business.  Hot from the Georgia Times:

Justice

The Best and Worst Laws of 2008

The NGO Law for People named the most fair and unfair laws of 2008 last week.

…

Law for People says the most fair and effective law of 2008 was the one adopted on March 14, 2008 about Electronic Signing and Electronic Documents. This law enables people to use an electronic document which has the same power as the hard copy of the document. Both documents are valid if they are approved by electronic signature. This would cut red tape and make the citizen’s relations with various organizations easier. The amendments to the Law About Public Registry is also a positive improvement, the NGO says. The amendments allow for a faster payment service, grant the Public Register the authority to identify the owner of a property, clarify the rights and obligations of the owners of immovable assets etc.

Law for People has been conducting annual monitoring of new laws since 2004, saying it wants to encourage the creation of just laws.

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Posted by Mike Ambrose

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