What does court test mean?

[Kelly]

Dear Sir
Would you please account for me what do these words mean?
Court tested?
E.g: All the fax messages have been court tested.

Thanks a lot

[Tom]

Dear Kelly

Are you sure it is not "code tested" ?

Tom

[Yankee]

Hi Kelly

I would expect "court tested" to be connected somehow to a contract or something legal.

In your sentence, the only meaning I can think of is: Information received/sent or agreements made via fax are considered to be legally binding or legally valid. And the reason is probably because there have already been court cases that have decided this.

Amy

[Jamie (K)]

As Amy says, court tested means that some legal concept, contract or law has stood up in court, which means that the judges think it is legally correct. When lawyers bring a case to court so that they can see if the judges will approve the concept or law behind it, that is called a test case.

[Kelly]

Dear All
I completely understand what you mean. So what I am going to cover about is Email messages? I mean is it still acceptable or legally valid to the same situation as fax messages if an agreement is sent out or made by that way.
Can someone elase provide me some more information about it?

Thanks so much for your help,

[Torsten]

Hi Kelly,

Could you please provide us with a little more information? As far as I understand, you want to know whether or not an email can create a legally binding agreement? If that is your question, we should examine the term electronic signature.
So, are you talking about the differences between a handwritten signature and an electronic one when it comes to signing a contract or any other legal document? If so, we need to know what kind of contract we are talking about -- what country/countries are the parties located in?
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Yankee]

Hi Kelly

Whether a fax or an E-mail message is legally binding or legally valid could depend on the laws of the countries involved.

For example:
Let's say someone in Country A sends an E-mail to someone in Country B. It's possible that Country A sees the E-mail as legally binding, BUT, because the laws in Country B are different, the person in Country B might not see it as legally binding or might see it as legally binding to a lesser extent. And that can cause problems.

Amy

[Jamie (K)]

Since anyone can send an e-mail, forge someone's electronic signature, or send a fake fax, whether or not those documents are legally binding would depend on whether or not the sender says he really sent them. The same is true of a normal signature. A signature can easily be forged, and so if someone says he was not the one who signed a document, and there are no witnesses to his signing it, then even an original document may not be binding. That's why we have signatures notarized.

[Torsten]

Hi Jamie,

I think in the digital age electronically documents will be the standard in the near future and those signatures will be legally binding even without being notarized. You may have a look at this -- there is much more information on this subject, of course:

The new solution, PublicOnline Box, combines smart cards, PC-connected secure readers with PIN pads and public key-based digital signatures to enable the confidential exchange of certified identities and binding transaction information via the Internet.
PublicOnline Box was developed in accordance with the requirements of administrative processes and the specifications of the BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security).
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary