The Legal Regime of the Digital Signature
The electronic signature is recognised in Georgia as an independent, fully-fledged legal institution. The current law defines the terminology, the legal force of signatures and stamps, and the authorisation procedure for providers of qualified trust services. Article 2 contains the definitions, Article 3 the legal force of the electronic signature and the electronic stamp, and Article 11 the authorisation of providers and the supervision of their activity. Knowing these three provisions is enough to understand when an electronic document constitutes full-fledged evidence before a court or an administrative body.
The law distinguishes the electronic signature from the electronic stamp: the signatory is a natural person who signs an electronic document electronically, while the stamp-maker is a legal person that places an electronic stamp on an electronic document. For the purposes of the law, a legal person also includes an administrative organ, an apartment owners' association, an unregistered association and a partnership. This distinction matters in practice because different verification rules and different legal effects attach to each form.