Behovet av förändrad köplag, med hänsyn till privathandeln, till följd av Internet

Sammanfattning: This paper considers the Swedish regulations of purchase taking the perspective of private persons as a starting point. The law of purchase from the year 1990 is applicable on a number of legal purchase situations where the contracting parties varies. Nevertheless, the law is mainly focused on the purchase between businessmen. This places private persons on level with businessmen, since they are given equal responsibility regarding legal knowledge and the drawing up of contracts.   In order to get a deeper knowledge of the law of purchase and to reach an understanding of how it should be interpreted we have studied the government bill on the law, cases from the Supreme Court, doctine on the area and legal articles. The purpose with this paper is to examine whether the law of purchase from the year 1990 is too old to be applicable on private purchases today. The reason would be the trade which has been modernised through the increased use of the Internet. Almost 90 % of the trade between private persons takes place through the Internet. Our intention is also to emphasise that the law of purchase lays too much responsibility on private persons and gives them too little protection at private purchases.   Since the law of purchase concentrates on trade between businessmen in the first place it is most suitable for people with legal knowledge. Hence it does not seem logical that it also applies on trade between private persons. The interpretation of the law might be difficult because of its vague wording. Several rules can make it problematic for a purchaser with low knowledge of the rules to invoke the sellers responsibility for a defective good. Moreover, according to the law the purchaser has a duty to inspect the good and this must be done carefully in order to avoid a situation where the seller will be able to escape from his responsibility.   As a result of this the law of purchase do not guarantee private persons any protection in practise. Since contracts are superior to the law it is possible to agree that rules involving protection should not be valid. To avoid insecurity and to secure evidence it is therefore important that the contracting parties carefully draft their contract. A comparison to the legal minimum protection of consumers clearly shows that the protection in the law of purchase seems relatively weak. Furthermore, because the law shall be interpreted in the light of secondary sources of law, which demands exstensive legal knowledge of the general public, legal security might be negatively affected.   We claim that it would be possible to reach a better harmonisation between the law of purchase and the current trade behaviour through a distinction between the regulation of trade between businessmen and the trade between private persons and also by introducing cogent rules for private persons.