Scanned signature is a dubious practice

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On March 13, 2024 (Commercial Chamber, 22-16.487), the Court of Cassation issued a very interesting ruling on the limits of using scanned signatures to attest to the identity and consent of their author.

The process of scanning signatures is valid, but it cannot be considered as a presumed reliable electronic signature within the meaning of Art. 1367 Al.2 of the Civil Code (i.e. a qualified electronic signature within the meaning of the eIDAS Regulation).

In this case, the Court of Cassation considers that in order to grant value to the scanned signature affixed to the contested promise of sale, the signatory would still have had to have previously consented to it, which he had not done.

Our advice is to avoid using scanned signatures as the sole proof of a party's commitment to high‑stakes acts. The Court of Cassation rightly notes that qualified electronic signatures should be used to legally secure the signing of an electronic document.

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Electronic signature: what if we talked about the "link"?

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Under French law, the definition of an electronic signature (Art. 1367 Al.2 Civil Code) implies a "link" between the act and the signature identifying its author. This notion of link is also found in the definition of the advanced signature in the European eIDAS Regulation (Art. 26) which states that the advanced signature must be "unequivocally linked to the signatory". But the meaning of this link is not obvious. We believe that it can be understood according to three approaches: a conceptual approach that projects onto the electronic signature a characteristic of the handwritten signature; a technical approach defining it via the electronic signature technology; and finally an opportunistic approach linked to the development of the on-the-fly certificate and the notion of evidence file, widely adopted by French judges.
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Electronic signature does not constitute consent

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On June 8, 2023, the Orléans Court of Appeal issued an original and very well-argued ruling on electronic signatures (RG No. 22/00539), concerning a personal credit contract between Carrefour Banque and a borrower.
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