Goods and Services Aggregators as New Subjects of Commercial Law

Abstract

The State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation adopted in the first reading a draft law, the key novel of which is supposed to settle the legal status of a new subject of commercial law - an aggregator of goods and services. Similar subjects (combining offers of shops, hotels, taxi companies) are widely represented on the market. In the context of Commercial Law, their qualification as the organizer of trade turnover allows, by analogy with the legal status of other subjects of the same nature, to assume a number of issues that also need to be settled, otherwise they will cause problems in the future: aggregators' ability to determine the terms of contracts between contractors and consumers and qualification of aggregators actions in the context of competition legislation. In addition, it should be borne in mind that for many aggregators the meaning of the business model is that they provide information about goods and services offered by persons who do not have the status of entrepreneurs.