K6 Blog

History has a way of repeating itself. Twenty years ago, when Amazon was just an experiment in online book sales and Google was just a Yahoo! copycat, nobody seemed to understand what the “Internet” actually was or how it would eventually affect our lives. That went double for lawyers, who in the mid-1990s pushed the panic button when the concept of online contracting became a reality. State lawmakers rushed to introduce statutes that would define and constrain this monster before it wrought havoc on the unsuspecting analog world of contract law. They came up with technology-specific, proscriptive rules for electronic signatures that, had they been successful, would have left the U.S. a patchwork of unworkable state laws that would have prevented electronic delivery and signatures for all kinds of transactions that we take for granted today. Fortunately, a model law called the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) emerged that, in contrast to the initial view that online...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced it obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month. The SEC filed charges against a recidivist Quebec securities law violator, Dominic Lacroix, and his company, PlexCorps. The Commission's complaint, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, alleges that Lacroix and PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the internet to investors in the U.S. and elsewhere, claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days. The SEC also charged Lacroix's partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer, in connection with the scheme. Today's charges are the first filed by the SEC's new Cyber Unit. The unit was created in September to focus the Enforcement Division's cyber-related expertise on misconduct in...

Initial coin offerings (ICOs)   have been hailed as a disruptive new business paradigm that allows startups -- most of which are focused on blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT)-- to raise operating funds without the regulatory constraints and requirements that are applied to a traditional underwritten IPO. Being positioned safely outside the regulatory framework, ICOs have become a very attractive and flexible fundraising tool.  The SEC has made it clear , however, that some ICOs are subject to the full reach of the securities laws. ICO market participants must now distinguish those ICOs that may continue without regulatory constraints and those that must now conform to the U.S. securities laws. This treatment is not elective or optional - if the ICO involves the offering of a security, the ICO must be done in accordance with established securities law requirements or proceed under an exemption if available. In its July 25, 2017  Report , the SEC concl...

You're heading into dangerous waters. On May 25, 2018, the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into full effect, and it will almost certainly affect you. If you are not compliant with the GDPR by this date, you could face fines of up to 20 million Euros or 4% of worldwide annual revenue per breach . So it's important to understand whether the GDPR applies to your business, and if it does, what you must do to comply. It probably applies to YOU The GDPR is a comprehensive regulation meant to protect the personal data of EU citizens, wherever that data might be processed . It greatly expands the geographical scope of the EU data protection laws. In fact, the GDPR applies not only to organizations located within the EU, but also to organizations located outside of the EU if they offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of, EU residents. So US-based companies will need to comply with the GDPR if they are doing business...

In December 2016, K6 Blog published this post instructing lawyers to "start thinking like developers" to remain relevant in the age of smart contracts. The following post appeared April 18, 2017 in the New Jersey Law Journal. By  Charles Toutant , New Jersey Law Journal Lawyers who advise clients on "smart contracts" drawing on blockchain technology say some potential adopters liken them to a "magic pill" that will provide a cure to all their contract-related headaches. But as " smart contracts"  become more common in more sectors of the economy, lawyers will need to increase their technical know-how and renew their focus on counseling clients instead of ministerial work, according to specialists in this fast-evolving field. While expectations should be tempered, experts said adoption of the new technology will bring changes to the practice of law. Some boosters of the technology have expressed unbridled enthusiasm for blockchain tec...

By Ken Moyle It's 2017 and your department is still overrun with paper. Your customers, employees and vendors are becoming more and more frustrated with you. Going digital is "on the road map" but doesn't seem to be getting any closer to reality. Why? From conversations with transformation leaders around the country, the seemingly simple concept of electronic signatures often gets intractably complicated soon after it's introduced to the organization. Internal resistance to change rears its head in many familiar ways, including dire predictions of unenforceability and loss of control, unsubstantiated conclusions about increased compliance risk or external adoption, and general concerns that the path forward is not clear enough to take such a significant step.  ​ ​ This is particularly true with mature organizations , where you must not only automate your current processes, but also investigate what they were intended to accomplish in the first place, ...

By Ken Moyle Attention all business attorneys who... ...took the LSAT because there was no math in it ...still pack a Blackberry ...think a " smart contract lawyer" is a  smart lawyer who writes contracts. I bring you some disturbing news. Your life is about to change. ​ ​ Technology is transforming your clients' business, and you cannot ignore it. Your clients may not be in the technology business, but they have recognized the need for tech to keep them competitive. As a trusted adviser, you will need to recognize how technology is influencing the relationships inside the client's company, and the resulting effect on your ability to continue adding value. The best example is the resurgence of the smart contract. A “ smart contract ” is a computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract. Although the concept has been making the rounds for 20+ years , it has recently become a dominant buzzword. That’s mostly because t...

By Ken Moyle As practitioners in the Digital Transformation space, we hear our share of concerns about authentication, especially in the area of electronic contracts. When we get asked, we find it’s important to clarify what is meant by authentication.  For example:  In IT terms, authentication means using a previously issued credential to grant access to a system.  So, when I use my userID and password to log onto my email account, I have authenticated myself. In legal terms, authentication means proving the genuineness of a document or any part of it, including a signature.  To get a document entered into evidence, I will need to establish a foundation and I will need to fend off any objections to the authenticity of the document or its contents. When we are talking about signatures, neither of those definitions really fits. And that’s because we often will use the term “authentication” when we really mean “attribution.” After all, as a party...

Welcome to Rome! K6 Partners '  Ken Moyle will be speaking on global e-signature enforceability and European eID at the IACCM EMEA conference Wednesday, May 11 at the Crowne Plaza St. Peters. Ken will be joined by SAP's Kai Jacob to answer questions about digital contracting and share implementation tips.  

By Ken Moyle As I wedged into my window seat aboard the Seattle-bound 737, I instantly recognized my seatmate-to-be as Governor of Washington state, Christine Gregoire.  It was Wednesday, June 30, 2010, and we were both heading home from D.C. after two days of intense lobbying on Capitol Hill.  My day wasn’t over just yet.  As the plane continued to board, I fired up my laptop and pulled up the live video feed from the House floor, just in time to catch Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wa) leading the floor debate in support of declaring today National ESIGN Day.  McDermott was lavishing praise on DocuSign[i] for spearheading the effort.  “Well,” the governor said over my shoulder as we watched the measure pass 397-15, “it looks like you had a better week than I did.” National ESIGN Day 2010 With the backing of the Electronic Signatures and Records Association -- a committed group of industry and public policy advocates -- both the U.S. House and Senate ...

By Ken Moyle Last week I revisited the history behind the rapid adoption of electronic commerce in the US over the past 15 years, along with a suggestion that we may be in for some growing pains.  Online identity and trust are still in their adolescence here, and if we do not work toward a more meaningful means of establishing online trust, we will not achieve the true potential of digital transactions. On the other side of the spectrum lies the European Union.  While America was building private sector e-commerce empires with low-risk, low value transactions in the 1990’s, Europe instead worked on an electronic commerce model that focused on minimizing online risk.  They had good reasons for this: their mission was to create a framework to support a “digital agenda” for online delivery of government services.  As I have previousy shared, "Government agencies in the US have been pressured for years to offer paperless alternatives, but concerns about...