Adobe Gets Into Electronic Signatures

Doc has, shall we say, a lot of legal issues, and when someone actually tracks me down I often end up having to sign a bunch of documents. So, I've been checking out several of the electronic-signature options in the marketplace. One, Echo Sign, was recently purchased by Adobe systems and, so, is likely to become a new standard.

Adobe plans to add EchoSign's electronic signature technology to its document exchange services platform, to reduce the time, cost, and complexity associated with getting a document signed.

The EchoSign technology, which is currently used by over 3 million people worldwide, will be integrated with other Adobe document services including SendNow for managed file transfer, FormsCentral for form creation, and CreatePDF for online PDF creation.

So what's the value of electronic signatures? According to Adobe, FedEx rakes in over $1.6 billion in overnight envelopes, much of it containing documents for signing. So the market for secure and verifiable electronic signatures could be large.

Now if someone could just figure out a way to take electronic depositions, Doc would be in much better shape.