Review On Legal Problems Of Online Auction Contract

With the advent and the prevalence of e-commerce, the online auction as a new style of trade has become more and more popular in nowadays. Since the application of the automatic trading system used in assisting contract conclusion has brought great challenges to the traditional contract theory, the disputes resulted from online auction contracts have now been increasing. Hence, the Union and the countries with developed e-commerce have successively taken measures to enact related laws and regulations to defend the challenges made by e-trade.This article makes online auction contract as the research objective, analyzing the characteristics of the online auction trade with the methods of comparison, induction and policy analysis. It analyzes the attributes of the conducts in all parts of the online auction trade, and explores problems of the formation, the effectiveness and the execution of the contract between the parties in the course of online auction. By light of the analysis on the specific legal attributes of related questions about online auction contract, the author aims to further clear the legal relations between the two parties of the trade, and definitudes the right, obligation and liability of the web distributor and the user so as to facilitate the resolution of online auction disputes.This article consists of the following parts.The first part makes an introduction of the origin and the consciousness of online auction, and points out that the purpose and the scope of the research is the online auction contract, moreover, it also introduces the methods used in this article.The second part mainly analyzes the essence of the online auction, clarifying its connotation, emphasizing the distinguishments between the online and the traditional auction, and making a conclusion on the detailed flow and the style of online auction according to the personal participation and practice.The third part is the keystone as well as the difficulty of this article. It firstly focuses on the capacity of the body, proposing that it should not completely object the force adeffect of the online contract concluded by the person with limited capacity for conduct. And then, using the laws and regulations of foreign electronic representative for reference, this part makes a discussion on the new coming issues produced by the function orientation, contractual ability and conduct ascription to the modern contract theory. It analyzes the formation and the effectiveness of online auction contract in detail, and clarifies that when we conclude a contract under online auction system, we need to analyze the true intention to decide whether publishing,bidding and the alike conduct is an offer or a promise. It is also required to discard the theory of cross offer, and make a specific analysis on the offer and promise in the online auction based on the online auction style. At the end of this part is the analysis on the confirmation of the time and spot in an online auction contract when it is concluded.The last part makes a discussion on the liability of the parties of the online auction contract, and analyzes the substituted liability of the platform distributor. It figures out that the platform distributor should and should only assume the responsibility when he knows or is informed of the tort or the illegality of the information but he didn't taking any remediation measures. For conclusion, the author finally proposes some corresponding legal suggestions.