68th session of UNCITRAL Working Group IV: key points of discussion and presentation of the ICLRC review

The ICLRC took part in the 68th session of UNCITRAL Working Group IV on Electronic Commerce UNCITRAL, which took place on 24-28 March 2025 at the UN headquarters in New York. The ICLRC was represented by expert Nikolay Dmitrik. During the session the Default rules for data provision contracts (third revision) was discussed. The last meeting on the draft was held in December last year.

Key issues of the session

The discussion centered on key issues affecting the future application of the document. These included:

• Methods of data provision (access, delivery, etc.), the list of which is open-ended in the current version of the Default rules, with any method used materially affecting the content of the contract

• The rights of the parties to use the data, including the default option of the data recipient's right to use the data in any way, as well as their relationship to data rights

• The issue of derived data and how to safeguard the commercial interests of the data provider and the data recipient.

It was not the intention of the Working Group to finalise the text of the Default rules at that session, so the Secretariat intended to use all the positions expressed during the discussion to prepare the next version of the Default rules, to be discussed in October 2025.

Approaches to regulating electronic commerce

On the margins of the Working Group, an event was held on the initiative of the Russian Federation to conduct an inventory of approaches to regulating digital trade. The event presented the results of the Center's research (identifying alternatives) based on the application of a new comparative legal research method to assess existing and prospective approaches to the regulation of digital trade in the world. In the discussion based on the results of the event, the principles of regulation of digital trade in the world were discussed. The principle of technological neutrality of regulation remains relevant, which is reflected in the results of the study. At the same time, the principles of non-discrimination and functional equivalence are losing their role following the digital transformation. Electronic documents and digital records are ‘positively discriminated’ in the legislation of an increasing number of countries, being given priority over paper documents. As a consequence, procedures for handling paper and electronic documents are becoming functionally non-equivalent. Automatic processing of documents, especially with the use of artificial intelligence, is conducted according to its own rules, while manual processing is conducted according to its own rules. 

The panellists supported the conclusion of the research on the importance of regulation based on the principles of convergence and interoperability. No matter how different the rules for paper and electronic document flow may be, to confirm the legal significance of domestic and foreign documents and records, it is possible and necessary to ensure their compatibility with each other. Building interoperable digital data ecosystems will ensure trust between participants from different countries through mechanisms for mutual recognition of documents and records.

The results of the session would be presented in a report to the UNCITRAL meeting in July 2025 and to the ESCAP Paperless Trade Week in June 2025.