Research On Bona Fide Acquisition Of Stolen Goods

Bona fide acquisition is an ancient legal system in civil law, whose purpose is to protect the legitimate rights and interests of bona fide third. However, in legal theory and practice there are lots of different opinions about whether bona fide acquisition should be used when the subject matter of the transaction is stolen goods. After the draft of property law came out, debates happened all the time about whether bona fide acquisition should be applicable to stolen goods. Property law was issued on Mar. 16^th, 2007 and brought into force on Oct. 1^st, 2007. It is a pity that the question of bona fide acquisition of stolen goods is not fixed in property law, which means property law denies the use of bona fide acquisition of stolen goods. Yet according to the substance and legal theory of bona fide acquisition, I think defect exists in property law because there are no rules about bona fide acquisition of stolen goods. The system of bona fide acquisition is very important to protect the interests of bona fide third, to maintain transaction security, to promote the circulation of commodities and to improve the material wealth of society. Research about bona fide acquisition of stolen goods has a special significance. How to rule bona fide acquisition of stolen goods is related to the normal market transaction. The reason is that according to its legal nature stolen goods doesn't belong to the subject of legal circulation. Yet if we wholly deny the rights of assignee in good faith, it may danger third person's trust on transaction security because too much attention is paid to the protection of the interests of owners. At the same time, according to its physical properties and attributes of goods, stolen goods, having no differences with others, belongs to general merchandises which flow freely in the process of transaction. It is important to construct a proper institution of bona fide acquisition of stolen goods. So on the basis of bona fide acquisition of stolen goods, this article tries to do some research about how our country should construct legal institution of bona fide acquisition of stolen goods by comparing laws of different countries and provides enough legal theories for perfecting future legislation.