In the past decade or so, much ink has been spilt over reservation of title clauses in this jurisdiction. The energy has been expended both by practitioners anxious to achieve the maximum protection for their clients and also by commentators reviewing the latest developments. The impetus behind the reservation of title phenomenon came from Continental suppliers who inserted reservation of title clauses into their conditions of sale when dealing with English suppliers. It is appropriate, therefore, that we should have a guide to reservation or retention of title, to use different expressions to describe the same experience, in various countries.

The book under review, produced by the International Chamber of Commerce, is represented in the Foreword as a practical guide to legislation and case law in 19 different countries. The aim is to provide basic information so that the buyer and seller can familiarize themselves with problems they will confront in international sales. It is also stated in the Foreword that the ICC intends to publish a second edition of this Guide to cover systems used in a number of other countries. The Guide was drawn up by a group of experts from the ICC’s Commission on Commercial Practice, with the assistance of ICC National Committees.

By and large the book succeeds in the objective of imparting basic information, though the accuracy of this information is very difficult to evaluate by one who is not an expert on the 19 different national legal systems involved. Above all else the publication brings home the truism that the same issues arise, albeit in slightly different guises, across the legal cultures. There are five different types of reservation of title clause: (i) the “simple” clause, which reserves title until the goods supplied have been paid for; (ii) the “all-liabilities” clause, which retains title in the seller until other obligations arising between buyer and seller have been discharged; (iii) the “continuing reservation of title clause”, which purports to retain title even after the goods have been onsold; (iv) the “proceeds of sale clause”, which gives rights in relation to proceeds of sub-sales of the goods; and (v) the “products clause”, which confers an entitlement to all or part of the product into which the goods supplied have been transformed.

Moreover, it is possible to combine certain of these clauses. For instance, (ii) can be combined with (iv) and (v). It is small consolation to English lawyers that their counterparts in other countries have had to grapple with the same problems in drafting. Equally oblivious to national frontiers are considerations such as the measures needed to ensure that the clause forms part of the contract of sale and the possibility of having to file information about the clause in a public register before effectiveness is attained vis-à-vis third parties.