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Legal Aspects

Registered Email™ certified email proof of delivery, RMail® and Digital Seal® services provide electronic seals, electronic timestamping, and legal registered electronic delivery services that are authenticatable proof and court admissible evidence in all European countries per eIDAS (EU) Regulation No 910/2014.

For every message transmitted, a return RMail® Registered Receipt™ email or Digital Seal® authentication timestamp and seal, provides a verifiable, court-admissible record of the email transaction with high evidential weight – proof of precise content (message body and all attachments) and official time the email was sent and received by each recipient. Service features permit additional functions such as providing the recipient the ability to verify email authorship, original content, and original timestamp of transmission, and encrypting for data privacy. The service accomplishes this secure and certified proof of delivery without any extra recipient action or special settings or software on the recipient side.

In summary, sending an RMail® or Registered Email™ message returns a Registered Receipt™ email record that serves as:

DELIVERY PROOF: The Registered Receipt™ email provides a record of sending and receiving in accordance with eIDAS European Union Regulation No 910/2014 Article 43(1), by recording the recipient’s server’s receipt and associating it cryptographically with the original message content, uniform timestamps, and forensic audit trail;

CONTENT PROOF: The encryption and tamper-detectability of a Registered Receipt™ email and Digital Seal® mark preserves the contents of emails and their attachments so as to satisfy process requirements designed under eIDAS European Union Regulation No 910/2014 Articles 43(1), 35(1), and 36, and evidence law and to establish evidence of content;

OFFICIAL TIME STAMP: The Registered Email™ system links to a trusted, objective, and legal time source per eIDAS European Union Regulation No 910/2014 Articles 41, and provides essential and credible evidence in disputes in which the time an email was sent or received is material to the case;

ADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE: Registered Receipt™ emails are court-admissible as to their fact of delivery, as to their legal time of delivery and as to authenticity of content; time stamp, seal, and electronic signature; per eIDAS European Union Regulation No 910/2014 Articles 25(1), 26, 35(1), 36, 41, and 43(1).

FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE: Registered Email™ message receipts serve as the functional equivalent of paper mail, which may be used in lieu of return receipt mail, private express mail services, fax logs and similar types of paper mail services; per eIDAS European Union Regulation No 910/2014 Articles 25(1), 26, 35(1), 36, 41, and 43(1).

ELECTRONIC ORIGINAL: A verified Registered Receipt™ email provides a true electronic original of the message content, message attachments, and transmission meta-data including the delivery audit trail.

RPost services implementation of eIDAS EUROPEAN UNION REGULATION No 910/2014, such that RPost technologies are considered to implement:

1. Advanced Electronic Seal adding legal effect as described in Articles 35(2), 35(3) by regulation.
2. Advanced Electronic Time Stamp adding legal effect as described in Articles 41(2), 41(3) by regulation.
3. Registered Electronic Delivery Service as further described in Article 44, adding legal effect as described in Articles 43(2) by regulation.

The European Regulation requires member states to “ensure that an electronic signature is not denied legal effectiveness…solely on the grounds that it is in electronic form.”

Article 35: Legal effects of electronic seals

1. An electronic seal shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements for qualified electronic seals.
2. A qualified electronic seal shall enjoy the presumption of integrity of the data and of correctness of the origin of that data to which the qualified electronic seal is linked.
3. A qualified electronic seal based on a qualified certificate issued in one Member State shall be recognised as a qualified electronic seal in all other Member States.

Article 36: Requirements for advanced electronic seals

An advanced electronic seal shall meet the following requirements:

(a) it is uniquely linked to the creator of the seal;

(b) it is capable of identifying the creator of the seal;

(c) it is created using electronic seal creation data that the creator of the seal can, with a high level of confidence under its control, use for electronic seal creation; and

(d) it is linked to the data to which it relates in such a way that any subsequent change in the data is detectable.

• Per Article 35(1), RPost’s electronic seal services, offered under on the platforms RMail® with its Digital Seal® feature, applies a legal electronic seal that may serve as proof of sender, original content, and timestamp (for sender and recipient) with high evidential weight, admissible in legal proceedings in Europe.
• Per Article 36, RPost’s electronic seal services, offered under on the platforms RMail® with its Digital Seal® feature, applies an advanced electronic seal that may serve as proof of sender, original content, and timestamp (for sender and recipient) with high evidential weight, admissible in legal proceedings in Europe, as the electronic seal (a) is uniquely linked to the creator of the seal; (b) is capable of identifying the creator of the seal; (c) is created using electronic seal creation data that the creator of the seal can, with a high level of confidence under its control, use for electronic seal creation; and (d) is linked to the data to which it relates in such a way that any subsequent change in the data is detectable.

Article 41: Legal effect of electronic time stamps

1. An electronic time stamp shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements of the qualified electronic time stamp.
2. A qualified electronic time stamp shall enjoy the presumption of the accuracy of the date and the time it indicates and the integrity of the data to which the date and time are bound.
3. A qualified electronic time stamp issued in one Member State shall be recognised as a qualified electronic time stamp in all Member States.

Article 42: Requirements for qualified electronic time stamps

1. A qualified electronic time stamp shall meet the following requirements:

(a) it binds the date and time to data in such a manner as to reasonably preclude the possibility of the data being changed undetectably;

(b) it is based on an accurate time source linked to Coordinated Universal Time; and

(c) it is signed using an advanced electronic signature or sealed with an advanced electronic seal of the qualified trust service provider, or by some equivalent method.

• Per Article 41, RPost’s electronic time stamp services, offered under on the platforms RMail®, RSign, and RForms, applies a legal electronic time stamp that may serve as proof of the time of sending and receiving (for sender and recipient) with high evidential weight, admissible in legal proceedings in Europe.

Article 43: Legal effect of an electronic registered delivery service

A qualified electronic time stamp shall meet the following requirements:

1. Data sent and received using an electronic registered delivery service shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements of the qualified electronic registered delivery service.
2. Data sent and received using a qualified electronic registered delivery service shall enjoy the presumption of the integrity of the data, the sending of that data by the identified sender, its receipt by the identified addressee and the accuracy of the date and time of sending and receipt indicated by the qualified electronic registered delivery service.

• Per Article 43(1), RPost’s electronic registered delivery services, offered under the service name “Registered Email™” and “Certified Email™”, return a proof receipt by email that may serve as proof with high evidential weight, admissible in legal proceedings in Europe.

Know More: Email Encryption

Laws Referenced

European Union laws on the enforceability of electronic transactions is governed by the Electronic Signatures Directive adopted in 1999 and the Electronic Commerce Directive adopted in 2000; and in 2016, European Union Regulation No 910/2014 (eIDAS).