Re: Legal entities who sign

["Jimi Thompson" <jimit@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<SNIP>
> According to "e-lawyers", legal entities cannot sign as even
> a delegated signer must be physical person.
</SNIP>

IMHO, secretaries and/or administrative assistants have been signing
documents for their CEO's for decades.  I know of several that are so good
that the signatures are virtually indistinguishable.  How is this any
different that having the CEO have more than one i-key (for example) so that
his assistant can sign documents in his absence?

Is the CEO really the ONLY person on the planet that has signing authority
for the company?  Most certainly not in the case of an ink signature.  All
sorts of people throughout any company have the ability to sign things.  In
legal-ese, authorized agents abound.  Procurement people sign things every
day, using their own pen-and-ink signature, but binding the company.
Shipping and receiving folks sign things every day, using their own
signature, also binding the company.  Most of these folks have a limit of
some kind on what they are allowed to sign.  Procurement folks, for example,
usually have a dollar limit.  I think that the real question is how to
include the limits and/or parameters into the certificate ( i.e. JoeBob's
certificate from Procurement at XYZ Corp is good but only up to $5000.00).
The XML folks might have some answers there.

In order to establish non-repudiation, I would say that you probably need to
have the CEO sign the authorized agents signature agreeing that they are
authorized under the parameters issued.  This should satisfy the
"non-repudiation" needs and still provide for statement about delegation of
authority.  I think that this solves your problem, as the only time a CEO's
key is needed would be to authorize a new agent.  The other, more accessible
people, would be available to handle day to day business.

You have a live human signing documents, which makes the "e-lawyers" happy.
It handles the "real world" delegation of authority that happens inside
companies.  I think that this solution satisfies all the criteria.  If I've
missed something, I'm sure that someone on the list will happily point it
out :)

Just my extremely humble 2 cents,

Jimi