What is uniform commercial code

Please reference the Terms of Use and the Supplemental Terms for specific information related to your state. Grow Your Legal Practice. Meet the Editors. How to Attach and Perfect Your Security Interest in Collateral In case of competing interests in the same secured collateral, make sure you know how to perfect your claim and have legal priority to the collateral.

Mitigation of Damages in Sale of Goods Contracts Find out what duty you have to minimize losses when the other party breaches a contract.

Battle of the Forms Under the UCC When a buyer and seller's order forms are different, how do you sort out contract terms in a dispute?

More Legal Topics. Related Products More. View More. Get Professional Help. Zip Code. How It Works Briefly tell us about your case Provide your contact information Choose attorneys to contact you. That early uniform law was revised and incorporated into the original version of the UCC in , and a further revision was approved in Finally, a set of amendments to UCC Articles 3 and 4 was approved in View Article 3, Negotiable Instruments.

Article 4, Bank Deposits and Collections Uniform Commercial Code Article 4 governs bank deposits and collections, providing rules for check processing and automated inter-bank collections. Article 4 was completely revised in and amended in View Article 4, Bank Deposits and Collections. Amendments to Article 3, Negotiable Instruments and Article 4, Bank Deposits These amendments to Uniform Commercial Code Articles 3 and 4 update provisions dealing with payment by checks and other paper instruments to provide essential rules for new technologies and practices in payment systems.

Article 4A, Funds Transfers Uniform Commercial Code Article 4A provides a comprehensive body of law on the rights and obligations connected with fund transfers. It was added to the UCC in View Article 4A, Funds Transfers. The amendment was necessary to conform the UCC with the federal law and associated regulations. View Article 4A, Amendments to. Article 5, Letters of Credit Uniform Commercial Code Article 5 governs letters of credit, which are typically issued by a bank or other financial institution to its business customers in order to facilitate trade.

Article 5 was updated in to address advances in technology and modern business practices. View Article 5, Letters of Credit. Article 6, Bulk Sales Uniform Commercial Code Article 6 covers bulk sales - a topic many states have determined is obsolete.

The original version of Article 6 was withdrawn by the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute in and replaced with two options for every state to consider: replace Article 6 with a revised version 6, or repeal Article 6 entirely. The ULC recommends repeal, and nearly every state has followed that recommendation.

View Article 6, Bulk Sales. Article 7, Documents of Title Uniform Commercial Code Article 7 covers documents of title for personal property, including warehouse receipts, bills of lading, and other documents typically used for commercial trade. Revised Article 7, approved in , updates the original version to provide a framework for the further development of electronic documents of title, and to update the article in light of state, federal and international legal developments.

View Article 7, Documents of Title. Article 8, Investment Securities Uniform Commercial Code Article 8 provides a modern legal structure for the system of holding securities through intermediaries.

The revision sets forth rules concerning the system through which securities are held, specifying the mechanisms by which ownership and other interests in securities are recorded and changed, and setting out some of the rights and duties of the parties who participate in the securities holding system. The Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC, is a very large collection of legal rules regarding many important business, or "commercial," activities.

As the word "Uniform" in its title suggests, a primary purpose of the UCC is to make business activities more predictable and efficient by making business laws highly consistent across all American states.

In the words of the UCC itself, the Code is intended "to simplify, clarify and modernize" commercial law, "to permit the continued expansion of commercial practices. The UCC is organized into eleven Articles.

You can get at least a general idea of the activities covered by the UCC from the titles of the Articles:. These eleven Articles are further subdivided into Parts and then into Sections. A single UCC rule is contained in a Section. For example, UCC Section , "Firm Offers," provides the rule for when offers by certain businesses to buy or sell goods are irrevocable.

The complete text of Section is as follows:. Many other sections of the UCC are substantially longer and may include multiple subparagraphs. For example, to more fully understand Section as quoted just above, you would need to check UCC Section for the Code's definition of "merchant" and UCC Section for the Code's definition of "goods.

The original version of the UCC was first published in Over the subsequent sixty years, the Code has undergone multiple revisions and incorporated many new amendments. In the case of any particular state, you probably will need to do some research to determine whether the very latest revision to one or another UCC Section has been adopted. For example, in there were important revisions to Articles 1, 2, and 2A, which have been widely adopted.

However, certain other, more recently proposed revisions have not been adopted by many individual states. The UCC is only a model or recommendation for what a particular state's commercial code might include; by itself, the UCC has no legal force.

However, in practice, every American state has adopted some version of the UCC, and those state versions, known as the states' commercial codes for example, the California Commercial Code , do have the force of law—in fact, they are laws.

Moreover, because the individual states generally adhere closely to one or another version of the model UCC, there is often relatively little variation between one state's commercial code and that of another. Variations do, however, exist. Because your state's commercial code may not be identical to the UCC in every detail, you should always look first to your own state's version of the UCC when trying to answer real-life questions.

On a practical level, you will likely turn to the UCC if your business is involved in a contract dispute covered by one of the UCC's many rules. As Section , quoted above, suggests, one common situation where this is true is a contract dispute involving the buying and selling of goods.