Norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and Digital Technologies: Issues of Judicial Practice

The author draws scientifically grounded conclusions regarding directions of judicial practice development in the context of application of the norms that recently emerged in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and related to the use of digital technologies by participants of economic turnover. The paper concludes in principle that the courts often apply the rules in question in a different context than the context that was meant by the law-maker. Practice in the cases under consideration cannot be considered as settled, which, among other things, implies the need to prepare scientifically based explanations at the level of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. One of the most difficult issues is the issue of the possibility of applying the rules of Art. 141.1 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, by analogy with the law, to regulate relations over digital assets that are not directly specified in the law. Speaking about the electronic method of concluding an agreement, it is worth concluding that Article 160 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation actually speaks of the admissibility of the procedure for proving the fact of concluding an agreement and its terms, and not of the subjective civil rights of participants in economic turnover to use electronic means of communication. There is a point of view that there is a refutable presumption that the party to the transaction concluded through electronic identification is the entity specified in the transaction documents.

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