Taiwan’s Cabinet Proposed Amendments to Taiwan’s E-Signatures Legislation
Following 9 months of internal discussions, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan (the “Cabinet“) passed draft amendments to Taiwan’s major e-signature legislation, named the E-Signatures Act, or the ESA (the “Draft Amendments“) on 29 February, 2024. The main amendments proposed by the Draft Amendments include:
-The Draft Amendments proposed that an electronic document that uses a digital signature that is supported by a valid certificate issued by a regulator-approved certification service provider should be presumed to be validly signed by the signatories. A digital signature means an electronic signature which is generated by the use of a mathematical algorithm or other means to create a certain length of digital data encrypted by the signatory’s private key, and which is further capable of being verified by a public key.
-Under the current ESA, the use of electronic signatures is subject to the consent of the counterparty of the contract or other documents. The Draft Amendments proposed that, if the counterparty does not object to the use of electronic signatures after the said counterparty has been clearly notified of the proposed use of electronic signatures and that the counterparty is entitled to object to such use, the counterparty will be considered to have agreed to the use of electronic signatures. The counterparty, however, may subsequently object to the use of electronic signatures at any time, whereupon the use of electronic signatures would no longer be available going forward for the document at issue.
-The current ESA authorizes government agencies to prohibit or restrict the use of electronic signatures on any documents related to those matters over which such agency has jurisdiction. The Draft Amendments propose that prohibitions or restrictions on the use of electronic signatures shall only be created by way of laws passed by the Congress, rather than by way of regulations and rules enacted by the various government agencies.
The Draft Amendments will be submitted to the Congress for discussion and approval. It is still too early, however, to determine when the Draft Amendments will ultimately be approved by the Congress and become effective.
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