Patent ID: 8122252

Claim:
A method, comprising: generating a digital contract term identifier of a digital contract term using at least the digital contract term; generating a digital contract clause identifier of a digital contract clause using at least the digital contract term identifier; generating a digital document identifier for a digital document using, as input for a transformation, at least one of the digital contract clause identifier of the digital contract clause and the digital contract term identifier of the digital contract term; generating a digital contract identifier for a digital contract using, as input for a transformation, at least the digital document identifier; and forming a digital signature using at least the digital contract identifier; wherein: generating the digital contract term identifier comprises hashing at least the digital contract term to generate a contract term hash value for the digital contract term; generating the digital contract clause identifier comprises hashing at least the contract term hash value to generate a contract clause hash value for the digital contract clause; generating the digital document identifier comprises hashing at least the contract clause hash value to generate a document hash value for the digital document; and generating a digital contract identifier comprises hashing at least the document hash value to generate a contract hash value for the digital contract.