Hart Publishing has kicked off its new Studies in Private International Law series with Zheng Sophia Tang’s excellent Electronic Consumer Contracts in the Conflict of Laws (2009). It is based upon Sophia’s PhD thesis, completed at the University of Birmingham in 2007. The blurb:

The application of private international law to electronic consumer contracts raises new, complex, and controversial questions. It is new because consumer protection was not a private international law concern until very recently and e-commerce only became an important commercial activity within the last ten years. E-consumer contracts generate original questions which have not been considered under traditional private international law theories. It is complex because it has to deal both with difficulties raised by consumer contracts and the challenges of e-commerce. Reasonable resolutions to consumer contracts may prove inappropriate in e-commerce, while effective approaches to resolving private international law problems in e-commerce may be improper for consumer contracts. It is controversial because it concerns the conflicting interests of consumers and businesses in a fast-moving commercial environment – a fair balance is therefore hard to achieve.

Without proper solutions provided by private international law, consumers will not be confident about purchasing online, and businesses will face unreasonable risk and participation costs in e-commerce. Updated and properly designed private international law rules are essential to the further development of e-commerce. This book aims to provide an answer to the urgent requirement for legal certainty, security and justice in e-consumer contracts. It is primarily concerned with existing approaches to jurisdiction and choice of law issues in e-consumer contracts in the European Community and England, but some typical approaches in other jurisdictions are also examined. Based on the analysis and the comparative study of the existing law, the book seeks to provide a proposal as to what the law should be in order to provide certainty to both parties, to provide reasonable protection to consumers, and to promote the development of e-commerce.

You can purchase it from Hart Publishing for £50.00, or from Amazon for £47.50.

Happy New Year to everybody. I have not posted in a while, but am now freed from the shackles of teaching (well, mostly) for this year, and so can devote myself to conflictoflaws.net once again (not, I’m sure, that anyone noticed my absence, given the dedication of my co-editors).

In any event, a few new publications dropped into my pigeon-hole in late 2009, and here’s the first: Intellectual Property and Private International Law, edited by Stefan Leible and Angsar Ohly (Mohr Siebeck, 2009). The blurb:

The relationship between intellectual property law and private international law has not always been an easy one. To many intellectual property lawyers, private international law seems like an esoteric and complicated field of law with many potential pitfalls. Hence there is a tendency to look for simple, straightforward rules such as the principle of territoriality and the lex loci protectionis rule and to solve more complex issues such as the collision of signs on the internet within substantive law. Private international lawyers, on the other hand, resent the territorial segmentation which results from the application of both principles. The fact that both fields of law are specialist matters, difficult to penetrate for outsiders, has complicated the discourse between both legal disciplines. Nevertheless there is a growing awareness that choice of law issues in this field really matter. The importance of intellectual property rights in a knowledge-based economy is increasing steadily. At the same time, the traditional principles governing the choice of law in intellectual property disputes have come under challenge in a globalized world dominated by internet communication. Eminent American und European scholars of both fields discussed different topics concerning the relationship between intellectual property law and private international law at the Bayreuth Conference “Intellectual Property and Private International Law” (4/5 April 2008). This volume comprises the papers which were presented.

ISBN 978-3-16-150055-8. Price: € 59.00. Purchase it direct from the Mohr website.