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I am creating an app where there will be many forms that have a signature. I am planning on using AngualarJS SignIt! on top of Rails to capture the signature. From there I will store it in a "signatures" table that will be attached to the person who signed it and the form it was signed on. I have a two part question:

  1. Is this a good flow to go about capturing a signature and storing it?
  2. What are the legalities of signed documents on a web page that I may need to be aware of? What information will make it legally binding and hold up in court?

Any help is much appreciated.

sturoid
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  • @charliefl Sorry man. I thought it was pretty code related because it is implementing an e signature with code... on a wesbsite. The legal question is just asking what data should be captured, if anyone had done that before and had experience with it. Plumbing and cars have nothing in common. This and code have a lot in common. – sturoid Dec 05 '13 at 03:04
  • "What information will make it legally binding and hold up in court?" - this is not something related to code (and the outcome of any one case does not necessarily imply a similar outcome for another), although you might try asking a plumber... Aside from this little wrinkle, I don't see anything wrong with this approach from a software perspective. – PinnyM Dec 05 '13 at 03:31
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is a legal question, completely unrelated to programming. If your question was just the first part, "is this a good flow to go about capturing a signature and storing it", then it would still be primarily opinion-based and off-topic anyways. – user229044 Dec 05 '13 at 03:36
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    Yeah this is just as unrelated as Apache's and MIT's open source licenses. Come on, what where you thinking? Expand beyond your silo of programming and realize that programming [especially] on the web deals with a lot more than just programming on the web... – Cory Silva Dec 05 '13 at 06:43

2 Answers2

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I'm a programmer working with an intellectual property attorney to develop an attorney-based website. According to what he has told me,

Two or more actions on the web count as a legally binding action.

This could be a click and a confirmation, a signature and a "submit" action, you get the idea.

DISCLAIMER: This information is only valid for the United States (as far as I know), and for educational purposes only, do not trust it, etc...

My advice: build your application and then worry about the legal issues later. Those problems are good problems.

OneChillDude
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  • Is this true for _every_ jurisdiction? What country/province/state/locality was this said for? – PinnyM Dec 05 '13 at 03:35
  • I believe this holds water for the entire U.S. Try avvo.com? – OneChillDude Dec 05 '13 at 03:37
  • Interesting to know. Have we established that the OP is dealing in the US, and only in the US? As an aside, the fellow illustrated on the landing page of avvo.com at this time is a said expert in DUI (you might as well be asking a plumber) - how much credibility do their statements have as far as legal recourse? – PinnyM Dec 05 '13 at 03:38
  • Yeah honestly Avvo is not a great resource, but they do have **all** types of attorneys. – OneChillDude Dec 05 '13 at 04:38
  • Glad I could be helpful, don't forget to accept the best anwser :) – OneChillDude Dec 05 '13 at 05:34
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My (partial) opinion is that instead of rolling your own you can just use DocuSign and get an IFRAME url for document with data and signatures and then display it whatever way you want. I am not a Ruby programmer, but here is code in Node, Java, Python, C# and PHP that can give you an idea of how to get a doc signed via DocuSign API:

http://iodocs.docusign.com/APIWalkthrough/embeddedSigning

mikebz
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