[ga-full] Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements

["!Dr. Joe Baptista" <baptista@pccf.net>]

from Love ..

---
The Hague Conference on Private International Law has issued a
preliminary draft for a "Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign
Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters."
  This contains controversial elements regarding electronic commerce. 
There will be a meeting of ecommerce experts in Ottawa on February 27
thorugh March 1 to discuss the ecommerce issues.  Consumer groups will
be meeting with US officials about this meeting next week, on February
22.    

Here are some ULRs for information regarding the proposed convention:

http://www.hcch.net/e/events/press01e.html
http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~billard/ipilec/
http://www.state.gov/www/global/legal_affairs/whats_new.html
http://www.state.gov/www/global/legal_affairs/991030_forjudg.html

One contact person in the government is Michael Donohue at the FTC.  His
email address is mdonohue@ftc.gov.  

>From the first press release, here is item 5:

   5.For business-to-consumer transactions, further assessment is
required in the light of all the interests involved. Particularly,
during the second plenary, Professor Catherine Kessedjian proposed to
avoid the traditional dichotomy between the "country of origin" (i.e.
that of the seller or provider) and the "country of reception" (i.e.
that of the consumer). She proposed to start with a process of
site-certification along the lines of the work done within the icc and
other private organisations. This certification process should include
minimum substantive rules of protection for the consumer including
warranties, and a fair and easy dispute resolution mechanism which could
possibly be free of charge to the consumer. When a site has obtained the
certification label, it could provide for the application of the law of
the country of origin and for the courts of that country for the
residual cases which could not be solved by the dispute resolution
mechanism part of the certification. If a site has not been certified,
then the law and the courts of the consumer's location would be
competent.


   This is a controversial proposal.  I'll provide additional details
later.  Jamie

                                          
-- 
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
v. 1.202.387.8030, fax 1.202.234.5176
love@cptech.org, http://www.cptech.org


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