The Comparative Study on Electronic Bills of Lading

• Main Authors: Hsing-chien Lin, 林幸蒨
• Other Authors: Huan Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22798907701578970367

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 99 === As electronic technology and Internet become increasingly mature, e-commerce, or e-business, is now the dominating the trend for the in the days and years ahead. Investment in e-commerce would dramatically bring down trading costs and new opportunities in market. Those traditional bills of lading (B/L) used to depend upon airmail or air courier to proceed with trading while very often a bill of lading (B/L) was still on the way of mail travel after the cargoes already reach the destinations and the consignee could not take delivery of the cargoes amidst the helpless delay. Subsequently the electronic bills of lading (B/L) came into being to solve such a dilemma. In comparison with international organizations and the shipping industry well developed countries which have made significant efforts in e-commerce, the Republic of China on Taiwan started e-commerce relatively too late. So far only the Electronic Signature Act has been the only authority backing up electronic bills of lading (B/L). The legislative spirit is still on the grounds of the contractual freedom principle, lacking mandatory force. The Maritime Law-the very base law governing marine trade-has not been timely updated to live up to the need of electronic business era. There is another new variable which calls for special watchfulness, i.e., the “United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea” signed in 2009, known as the Rotterdam Rules in brief, drafted by those nations notably including the United States and China which are both very important in economic and trading transactions with Taiwan. Where Rotterdam Rules have come into being and put into enforcement, we might suffer critical problems if we are lacking behind times in legislation in Taiwan. The Rotterdam Rules bestow legal grounds for utilization of electronic bills of lading (B/L) which, therefore, we must try by all means to make known and promoted. Such efforts are intended to prevent our trading sphere from being unfamiliar with the new technology & know-how and new rules and, in turn, undergo losses and damages in trade. The present thesis makes a comparison of the bills of lading (B/L) under international pacts of varied eras about the specifications and evolution of the bills of lading (B/L) before we conduct in-depth discussion about the Maritime Law and such laws and ordinances concerned. Through such efforts, we will take firm command of the maritime transportation documents of the up-to-date types. In turn, we will be able to face up to the legal challenges in the electronic bills of lading (B/L) out of the traditional documented maritime papers.