While many legal documents can now be drawn up, signed and stored in electronic form, this has not been possible until now for negotiable instruments (bills of exchange, promissory notes, bills of lading, etc.), where the holder must hold at least one original in order to exercise or transfer the rights represented by the instrument.
How can the functional equivalent of the rights conferred by possession of the original paper document be guaranteed for a dematerialised document? How can the uniqueness of the “original” of the dematerialised document be guaranteed?
Until recently, the lack of a legal answer to these questions prevented the digitalisation of negotiable instruments.
Inspired by the UNCITRAL model law on electronic transferable documents, Title II of Act 2024-537 of 24 June 2024 to increase business financing and the attractiveness of France constitutes a real legal revolution and completes the French system for digitising legal documents by enabling the creation and transfer of electronic transferable securities.
The conference on “the new frontiers of digitalisation”, chaired by our colleague, Antoine Diesbecq, President of the Association Law and Commerce and Patrick Sayer, President of the Paris Commercial Court, which was held on Monday 14 October 2024 at the Paris Commercial Court, gave our partner, Dominique Doise, the opportunity to speak in particular about the main thrusts of the new law, which he knows all the better for having co-chaired the group of Paris Europlace lawyers who drafted the text of the law.
