With the help of his insurance agent, Frederick W. Long III applied for health-care coverage online a few years ago. Along the way, Long authorized her to type his name in a field on the electronic form and click on a button labeled "I agree."

Throughout the application process, Long touched neither pen nor paper, and he never "signed" anything—at least not in the traditional sense. But in a landmark case, an Ohio court has ruled that by letting his agent type in his name and click on "I agree," he bound himself as surely as if he had signed a paper document.

The Ohio state court's bellwether decision last August to uphold the validity of a paperless contract has repercussions far beyond Long's survivors—he died of a heart condition in 2007—and the company that wrote his health-care policy.

The ruling has spurred many companies, from mortgage companies to lawyers, to look anew at digital technologies that promise to save them time, data-processing costs, and postage when it comes to shuffling contracts, applications, and other legal documents.

In Long v. Time Insurance Corp., an Ohio district judge issued a summary judgment that clicking "I agree" to terms and conditions associated with an online health insurance application is a legally binding act.

A handful of previous lawsuits have ended similarly with judgments or verdicts that virtually signing an electronic document with a "digital signature" is as valid and binding as physically signing a paper document—a so-called wet signature. But those cases were decided only after tortuous litigation. The Time Insurance case was decided peremptorily, without even going to trial.

"It's taken a long time for people to understand the technology and for the case law to be established," said Patrick Hatfield, an attorney at Lord, Bissell & Brook, a law firm in Atlanta.

President Bill Clinton appeared to have ushered in the era of electronic signatures eight years ago, when he digitally signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. But the legislation only established the equivalency of electronic signatures; it didn't specify a particular protocol or technology.

This lack of standardization "put the burden on businesses to find or create a legally binding form or process," said Ben Wright, a lawyer in Dallas who specializes in electronic law. Most were loath to try until others did it successfully and lawfully. "No one wanted to be the first to jump in the pool," he said.

Of course, it's now common to use electronic signatures to buy books or clothes or other relatively inexpensive items online. But costlier transactions still usually require wet signatures on hard copy. Exceptions have only been in the last couple years, primarily in the document-intensive drug and insurance industries.