On May 29, 2000 the Mexican Government published several modifications to the Civil Code, the Civil Procedures Code, the Commerce Code and the Consumer Protection Law in order to properly protect any kind of electronic transaction.

Certainly, these modifications can not be considered as an E-commerce Law per se, as they were not gathered in a single Law, but they try to operate as if they were.

There are several interesting points defined in the modifications of the Laws and Codes mentioned above.

  1. First of all, these modifications do not have any compromise with a particular technology, as the modifications to the Civil Code mention that, referring to the acceptance and/or proposal of an offer "the rules must be applied to an offer made by telephone, or any other electronic or optical means or any other technology that allows the expression of the offer and the acceptance of the same in an expedite way".
  2. There is also a recognition of the information generated or communicated which is registered in any of the above-mentioned means as evidence.
  3. As the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission for International Trade Law) mentions in its model Law, the data message is defined in the new Title of the Commerce Code (now known as OF THE ELECTRONIC COMMERCE) as "the information generated, sent, received, saved or communicated by any electronic or optical means or any other technology".
  4. There are defined several new functions of the Mexican Public Registry of Commerce. They will be in charge of the maintenance of a database in which each mercantile act should be recorded. The procedure of recording said transactions would be defined in the corresponding regulations.

These are only some of the relevant points of the modifications of certain Mexican Laws in order to properly deal with e-commerce in Mexico.

Unfortunately, the UNCITRAL model Law was not fully adopted, and there are several important missing definitions, such as the electronic signatures.

We believe that, although the legislation in electronic commerce matches with other legislations trying to make uniform the legislations in the world, in the near future these modifications have to be modified again in order to include all those missing parts mentioned in the UNCITRAL model Law.

In next issues, we will be deeply analyzing all these modifications, and the implications they could have in a globalized trade world.

"The content of this article is intended only to provide general guidelines related to this particular matter. For your specific circumstances, full specialist advise is recommended"