CYIL 2012

PARALLEL NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAWS ȃ CZECH LAW AND THE PROPOSED… Most national laws have failed to update their commercial codes to stay relevant to these new types of products and transactions. An alternative to a wholesale adoption of CESL as Czech national law would be to enact it incrementally. 95 Given the increasing number of transactions in digital content via the Internet, a law based upon CESL’s general contract rules and its rules relating directly to the supply of digital content could fill in a gap in current Czech law. More ambitiously, CESL’s coverage of digital content could be used as a starting point in the drafting of a broader domestic law. CESL fails to address many issues relating to the licensing of software and other informational products, such as shareware. The English and Scottish Law Commissions alluded to this issue as follows: “Distance selling needs its own clear rules, designed around automated processes. CESL is based on more general contract law principles and we think that it would benefit from greater focus on distance sales.” 96 In short, CESL’s coverage of digital content could be used as a starting point for a broader law of licensing.

95 See Larry DiMatteo, “Common European Sales Law: A Critique of Its Rationales, Functions, and Unanswered Questions, Journal of International Trade Law & Policy 12 (2012) (in press). 96 Law Commission and Scottish Law Commission, An Optional Common European Sales Law: Advantages and Problems; Advice to the UK Government, at vii, published only online at http://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/news/advice-on-european-sales-law or http://www.justice.gov.uk/ lawcommission/publications/1698.htm (10 November 2011).

235