The Rules of Law on Warranty Liability in Contracts for the International Sale of Goods - With Special Reference to CISG -

국제물품매매계약에 있어서 하자담보책임에 관한 법리 - CISG를 중심으로 -

In contracts for the international sale of goods, a seller must deliver appropriate goods and hand over relevant documents according to a contract, which will transfer the ownership of the goods to a buyer. In this case, if there are defects in the contracted goods, the warranty liability will occur. However, in the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), a term-the conformity of the goods to the contract-is used universally instead of the warranty. According to the CISG, a seller must deliver goods in conformance with the relevant contract in terms of quantity, quality, and specifications, and they must be contained in vessels or in packages according to the specifications in the contract. In addition, a certain set of requirements for conformity will be applied implicitly except when there is a separate agreement between parties. Further, the base period of conformity concerning the defects of goods is the point when the risk is transferred to the buyer. A seller shall be obliged to deliver goods that do not belong to a third party or subject to a claim then, and such obligations shall affect the right or claim of a third party to some extent based on intellectual property rights clauses. If the goods delivered by the seller lack conformity, or incur right infringement or claim of a third party, then it shall be regarded as a default item per the obligation of the seller. Thus, the buyer can exercise diverse means of relief as specified in Chapter 2, Section 3 (Article 45-Article 52) of the CISG. However, such means of relief have been utilized in various ways for individual cases as shown in judicial precedents made until now. Contracting parties shall thus keep in mind that it is best for them to make every contract airtight and they should implement each contract thoroughly and faithfully to cope with any possible occurrence of a commercial dispute.