Legal compliance of the electronic Bill of Lading

Abstract

The Bill of Lading (BOL) is one of the most important documents in international trade. In addition to its main functions, such as evidence of contract and the receipt of goods, the document of title function plays an equally essential role and contributes to the importance of the BOL. However, the rapid developments and changes of international trade have highlighted the limits of the traditional BOL. Its flaws, such as slowness, the possibility of fraud and high relative costs have often been revealed as problematic. The electronic Bill of Lading (eBOL), which represents the legal and functional equivalent of the paper-BOL, was thus created to eliminate these abovementioned flaws. Nevertheless, the global implementation of the eBOL is not realizable yet, due to the existence of a range of barriers. The main barrier, which will be further discussed in this paper, is the lack of knowledge regarding already in place standards and regulations. Hence, this paper sets out to discuss existing standards and regulations such as the Rotterdam Rules, the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records and the Electronic Data Interchange and will examine to what extent they can support the implementation of an eBOL. Keywords— Bill of Lading, electronic Bill of Lading, legal equivalence, digitalisation, EDI, Rotterdam Rules, Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records