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The starting point is that a sales contract is a contract for the allocation of the goods to the buyer against payment. Although the CISG contains no explicit rules on when the goods are sufficiently allocated to the buyer, it is commonly stated that one could derive from its Articles 30 and 53 that a contract is only a sales contract under the CISG if it requires the seller to transfer property in and possession of the goods and requires the buyer in turn to pay the price and take delivery of the goods.561 The underlying rea 124 son for referencing property is the presumed allocation of the goods: By allocating the property of the goods to the buyer, they are sufficiently allocated to the buyer for a sales contract. In the same vein, some scholars argue that the obligation to transfer the property cannot be excluded by the parties under Article 6 of the CISG as this obligation is a necessary building block of a sales transaction under the Convention.562 According to them, if the parties were to exclude this obligation, the CISG would not apply. Torsello even argues that the obligation to transfer the property in the goods is the only obligation of the seller that is decisive for the characterization of a sales contract under the CISG.563

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Under national sales laws, the relevance of property to characterize sales contracts is equally discussed and oftentimes affirmed.564 However, such national debates do not have international contracts in mind, which adds the problem of diverging understandings of what property is and what things or objects can be subject to property rights. The discussions revolving around unharmonized national law cannot be taken at face value, and could not even be transplanted to the Convention if Article 7(1) of the CISG were not to exist.565