개정 미국통일상법전(UCC) 제2편(물품매매)의 비교법적 고찰 - 서식전쟁(Battle of Forms) 부분을 중심으로 -

Abstract

The American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commission on Uniform State Laws amended Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code in 2003. One of the most urgent and challenging tasks the sponsoring organizations undertook in amending the Sales Article of the Code was to revise UCC section 2-207, the “battle of the forms” section that will live in infamy. In revising the original statute (hereinafter referred to as UCC-O section X-XXX), the drafters decided to move the rule stated in UCC-O section 2-207(1) to revised section 2-206(3) (hereinafter referred to as UCC-R section X-XXX), so that all of the standards governing formation of a contract for sale by acceptance of an offer are now collected in UCC-R section 2-206. In the proposed amendment of Article 2, a revised section 2-207 replaces subsections (2) and (3) of UCC-O section 2-207. The sole province of UCC-R section 2-207 is to identify the terms of a contract for the sale of goods. The language of UCC-R sections 2-206(3) and 2-207 and the proposed Official Comments to those sections improves upon the language of UCC-O section 2-207and its Official Comments. Adoption of the revised statute will make much of the case law and scholarly commentary interpreting the original statute obsolete. Despite the improvement, however, the language of UCC-R sections 2-206(3) and 2-207 still does not provide sufficiently clear and thorough guidelines for resolving the questions of sales contract formation and content that those sections address. This article provides a overview of the relevant original statutes in a critical manner and then provides an evaluation of revised UCC sections 2-206(3) and 2-207. Part of the evaluation identifies the many ways in which language of the revised statutes improves upon the language of their predecessor. The evaluation also suggests how the text of UCC-R sections 2-206(3) and 2-207 might be further revised or interpreted in order to provide needed guidance when the revised statute are adopted. In addition, this article provides a short comment of the equivalent sections in both UN Convention on the Contract for International Sale of Goods (CISG) and UNIDROIT Principles on International Commercial Contract (PICC) as to the changed acceptance