In this framework, a Canadian judge has ruled in a recent case that sending a message with the thumbs up emoji can be interpreted as a valid means of formally sealing a contract.
The thumbs up is a gesture commonly used to express approval, agreement, or satisfaction with something or someone.
This has been reflected in the summary documents of the trial to which this case refers, in which a farmer and a flax buyer faced each other over a breached contract, and which ended up ruling in favor of the buyer, who will have to receive 82,000 Canadian dollars (about US$61,661) from the farmer.
As reported, the buyer sent the purchase contract by message, followed by the text “confirm the linen contract.” After that, the farmer responded with the emoji, and there was no further interaction between the two. In fact, the agreed linen was not delivered.
The farmer claimed that the buyer had not sent you the full terms and conditions of the contract and, in this sense, he understood that the complete contract would be sent to him later by email. Therefore, he sent the emoji with the intention of implying that he “had received the message”, but denies “that he accepted the thumbs-up emoji as a digital signature of the incomplete contract.”
“This court readily recognizes that an emoji is a non-traditional means of signing a document, but nevertheless, in these circumstances, this was a valid form to transmit the two purposes of a signature and to transmit the acceptance of the linen contract”, points out the judge.
Thus, regarding its validity as a signature, Keene qualified that the signatory can be identified using their unique telephone number as a record.
“The courts will be inundated with all kinds of cases if this court determines that the thumbs up emoji can take the place of a signature,” the farmer’s lawyer stressed.
To which Judge Keene qualified that this appears to be “the new reality in Canadian society” and that, therefore, the courts “will have to be ready to face the new challenges that may arise from the use of emojis and the like.”
