UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2004

This new edition of the UNIDROIT Principles, appearing ten after the first edition, is not intended as a revision of the 1994 edition. As is amply demonstrated by the extensive body of case law and bibliography reported in the UNILEX database , the UNIDROIT Principles have generally met with approval and have not given rise in practice to any significant difficulties of application. Consequently, only very few amendments of substance were made to the 1994 text and these were moreover limited. However, it was decided to consider whether and, if so, to what extent the 1994 edition of UNIDROIT Principles required additions or amendments to adapt it to the increasingly important practice of electronic contracting. The main purpose of the new edition of the UNIDROIT Principles is to cover additional topics of interest to the international legal and business communities. Thus, five new chapters were prepared dealing with authority of agents, third party rights, set-off, assignment of rights, transfer of obligations and assignment of contracts, and limitation periods. Furthermore, two new articles were included, respectively dealing with inconsistent behaviour (Article 1.8) and release by agreement (Article 5.1.9). As a result, the 2004 edition of the UNIDROIT Principles consists of 185 articles (as opposed to the 120 articles of the 1994 edition).