CISG in the digital world digital economy: data, products, and assets

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the question of whether the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International sale of Goods (CISG) applies to the new digital world: a world where exchange or a combination of computer programs, licenses, software, and data as well as services are part of the new digital economy. These are new phenomena that are not regulated at all, or under-regulated, in domestic legal systems where courts and scholars struggle to accommodate these new digital realities in the already existent rules and traditional contract categories and to find appropriate solutions for mixed contracts for goods and services by an expanded interpretation of the traditional rules. By contrast, a recent tendency is observed at an international level either to review the already existent uniform law instruments in order to see whether they can cover the digital economy, or to create new soft law instruments. The CISG is not immune to the ‘danger’ that soft law instruments recently drafted to cover some transactions of the digital economy might create the wrong impression that the CISG, a hard law instrument, cannot cover them.