The Affirmativ Value of the Electronical Documents in Iranian Law

Civil law in article 1258, considers written documents as the proofs of sustaining evidence and also subsequent to that has defined the document in article 1284 as “the documents consists of any written paper that is attributable in the position of dispute or defend.” The definition of article 1248 of civil law is that the document shall be in objective & substantial form, but the increasing tendency to using of Electronical devices and also expanded trend to application of electronic contract conclusion, and as a result the governments are forced to consider even its legal aspect and enact the appropriate rules in this regard. In our country, the enactment Electronic Business Act passed on 07 Jan. 2004 can be considered as an effective and important step in this field. In spite of enactment of law of Iranian Electronic Business Act, the statues of electronic contracts and following it the electronic evidences especially the Electronical document are ambiguous and this matter made many problems for fair and proper judgment. The main object of present thesis is to reviewing the Electronical documents as a new form of documents subject of article1258 of civil law. This research focuses on this fact that, although civil law has expressively applied the word “written” in the definition of document, but the comparison of traditional documents and Electronical documents make explicit that according to theory of functional equivalences, whatever that can be considered as function of traditional documents, exactly or even in the better manner, provides the Electronical documents.