ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 65

(2) If the seller makes the specification himself, he must inform the buyer of the details thereof and must fix a reasonable time within which the buyer may make a different specification. If, after receipt of such a communication, the buyer fails to do so within the time so fixed, the specification made by the seller is binding.

Legislative history || Case law || Scholarly writings || Links to related articles || Words and phrases || CISG (full-text)

Guide to this article

• UNCITRAL outline of issues present
  
• Editorial analysis of this article with cross-references to related subjects, Ralph Amissah [Norway/Ghana]
  
• Secretariat Commentary (closest counterpart to an Official Commentary on this article)
• Match-up of this article with the 1978 draft
(to validate Secretariat Commentary)
• Use of the Principles of European Contract Law to help interpret CISG article 65
  • Editorial remarks: Andrea L. Charters [U.S.]
  • Match-ups with Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence

• Roadmap to the legislative history of this article
• Legislative history of this article: long form
• Legislative history of this article: short form
  • Chronology of development of Article 65 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedent
  • Article 65 match-up with ULIS
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS
  • See also the Report of the Special U.S. Committee, dated 1 December 1964,
    explaining why the United States elected not to adopt either ULIS or ULF

• CASES INVOLVING CISG ARTICLE 65
  • Computer list of annotated cases

• For a companion report on CISG case law and other material, go to Unilex: click for description of and link to this excellent service

• See also:
  • UNCITRAL digest

  • UNCITRAL digest + added cases

• Selected monographs and anthologies
• Comments on Article 65 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]

• Comments on Article 65 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]

• Comments on Article 65 by Victor Knapp [Czechoslovakia] in 1987 Bianca-Bonell Commentary on the International Sales Law
• Comments on Article 65 by John O. Honnold [U.S.] in the 3rd ed. (1999) of the most frequently cited text on the CISG: Uniform Law for International Sales
• Comments on Article 65 in December 2000 text by Joseph Lookofsky [Denmark / U.S.]
• Commentarios al Articulo 65 sobre textos de 2001 por Pilar Perales [España]

• See also the helpful Enderlein & Maskow text (cited below under the words and phrases section of this Annotated Text material)

• Citations to materials on this article in other texts (selected texts only)

• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries

• Supplementary list of citations to Article 65 commentaries: Unilex citations*
  * Most members of the Autonomous Network of CISG Websites also offer bibliographies. Many are tailored, concentrating on commentaries by authors from or writing on CISG issues of special interest to specific countries or regions; some, e.g. CISG online are general and extensive; some, e.g., CISG-Belgium and CISG-Finland also list commentaries by individual articles of the CISG.
  • To identify relevant commentaries, go to the cisgw3 Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [remedies is a search form entry you may wish to consider]

    Bibliography citations on remedies

    We also encourage you to tailor your own cisgw3 bibliography search to the specific aspect of this article that you are researching.*

    * The cisgw3 bibliography contains over 500 pages of citations. Analyzing these listings can pay dividends.

Links to related articles

Attention to related articles and to the CISG in its entirety is important. This is an autonomous law, i.e., it is meant to be construed within its four corners. When considering aspects of the CISG, because this law relies heavily on general principles, one ought to look at related provisions and the CISG in its entirety.

• It is conceivable that buyer's obligation to provide specifications can be regarded as part of his "obligation to take delivery" as recited in Article 60; go to Annotated Text of Article 60

Words, phrases and concepts

• The Enderlein & Maskow text is a good place to commence words and phrases research. Click for their analysis of words, phrases and concepts in this article.

  See also:

• State of knowledge ("may be known to") [65(1)]: link to variations on this theme recited elsewhere in the CISG

• notices governed by receipt rule (seller's notice supplying missing specifications [65(2)])): for commentary on this and other notices, go to Peter Schlechtriem [Germany], Effectiveness and Binding Nature of Declarations (Notices, Requests or Other Communications) under Part II and Part III of the CISG, Cornell Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (Kluwer 1995) 95-114

• electronic communications. For a current and authoritative ruling on electronic communications and article 65, go to CISG-AC Opinion no. 1, Electronic Communication under CISG, 15 August 2003. Rapporteur: Professor Christina Ramberg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• reasonableness [65(2)]. In addition to being specifically mentioned in this article, reasonableness is a general principle of the CISG
  • For the definition of reasonableness recited in the Principles of European Contract Law and references to reasonableness in Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence, go to PECL article 1:302 and the comment and notes prepared for this provision

  • To drive home the correlation between the PECL's definition of reasonableness and the evident same meaning of this term to CISG legislators when they used the concept either specifically or as a general principle of the uniform law they drafted, see overview comments and comments that illustrate the similar manner in which this concept fits the CISG

For a Doctoral thesis on "Reasonableness" in International Commercial Law, go to Guillaume Weiszberg, Le "Raisonnable" en Droit du Commerce International [pour le doctorat en droit de l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), 7 novembre 2003]