Digital Evidence in Commercial Proceedings

The development of technologies in recent years has caused the emergence of new ways of creating, gathering and transforming the information. Firstly, the economic entities commenced using alternative ways of communication (messengers, short messages) in conducting business, and, secondly, the government is developing the concept of E-government in order to facilitate the provision of public services. Such factors result in the huge demand of electronic evidence in commercial proceedings. The aim of the diploma is to distinguish electronic documents from other kinds of evidence by determining the procedural specificities of examination of such documents including the interim measures. The research paper is based on the analysis of current legislation and relevant practice of Russian commercial courts. The study has shown that the peculiarities of e-evidence allow us to categorize it as a special kind of evidence. Thus, the approach to qualify it as written evidence suggested in Arbitrazh Procedural Code seems deliberative and requires being revised in order to standardize the court practice.