As Guardian readers and others may already know, the King’s Bench for Saskatchewan has now ruled on the contractual effect of an emoji.

South West Terminal Ltd. v Achter Land, 2023 SKKB 116 (8 June 2023)

Briefly, the question was whether a thumbs-up emoji, sent as a text message, could be treated not merely as agreement to the terms proposed in a prior text, but also as constituting a sufficient “note or memorandum” for the purposes of the Sale of Goods Act. Keene J answered yes to both, concluding at para 63 that “This court readily acknowledges that a 👍 emoji is a non-traditional means to ‘sign’ a document but nevertheless under these circumstances this was a valid way to convey the two purposes of a ‘signature’ – to identify the signator ([defendant’s agent] using his unique cell phone number) and as I have found above – to convey [defendant’s] acceptance of the flax contract”.  

Steve Hedley

9thlevel.ie

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