Contracts in Electronic Form: Problems of Theory and Practice

The relevance of this study is determined by the intensive spread of all spheres and activities of the society of electronic data exchange by means of information and communication technologies. Due to the fact that legislative regulation of electronic turnover significantly lags behind the practice of its use, the use of electronic means at conclusion of civil law transactions is usually associated with a number of theoretical and practical problems: the validity of transactions in electronic form (compliance with requirements for form, offer, acceptance); uncertainty of the subject composition; time of conclusion of an electronic contract, etc.). To solve these issues, using general scientific methods and special legal methods, including formal legal, comparative legal, were studied general issues of validity and order of conclusion and execution of transactions in electronic form on the basis of theoretical developments and conclusions of foreign and domestic doctrine, international and Russian acts, regulating electronic transactions, domestic and foreign law enforcement practice. In the course of the research the necessity of using the approach for delimitation of transactions made in electronic form from other transactions in written form on the basis of functional equivalence and technological neutrality criteria was proved.