Domsrätt och lagval vid elektronisk handel

This study addresses some of the private international law perspectives on electronic commerce, namely the matters of jurisdiction and choice of law. Electronic commerce is based on the formation of contracts, and when there are contracts, questions regarding legal issues arise. A distinctive trait of electronic business is that its activities are not bound by geographic borders in a traditional sense; cross border-contracts can be entered into as easy as can “domestic” contracts. This cross-border transaction adds another element to the legal questioning involved – which court will be competent to entertain a claim that sources from an electronic contract and which country’s law will be applicable? These questions are of course not new; as long as there have been nations there have been cross-border contracts and questions of jurisdiction and choice of law have, consequently, been dealt with for many years. What complicates this situation is the fact that the existing rules, established to deal with these questions, have not been adapted to the e-commerce environment. The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the questions that arise, when the rules of private international law are applied to e-commerce. The secondary aim is to examine how the existing set of rules dealing with private international law can be interpreted and applied to contractual obligations that source from electronic contracts.