The Internet and Private international law

VIII Abstract The Internet and private international law This master's thesis deals with the current state and future development of the concept of digital content in the law of European union. A brief history concerning the Brussels- and Rome- community conventions and their replacement with the current regulations is presented in the first part of the thesis, along with several interesting cases of the Court of Justice of the European union. A model international consumer contract for supply of digital content concluded over the internet is used in conjunction with the Pammer/Alpenhof case in order to demonstrate the concept of directed activity within the meaning of the Brussels I recast and Rome I regulations. Next, the Falco and Usedsoft decisions are analyzed, along with possible consequences of the asserted exhaustion of intellectual property rights after first transfer of an intangible copy of copyrighted software, and the implications thereof. Subsequently a short theoretical digression is made to dissect the notion of goods as used by the UN convention on contracts for international sales of goods, in order to determine the limits of the convention vis-à-vis intangibles. The Vienna convention also presents a useful mirror to the (now dead) proposal for Common European sales law (CESL), as the..