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Publications on Contract Architecture and Languages

Jonathan Gelati, Guido Governatori, Antonino Rotolo and Giovanni Sartor.

Normative Autonomy and Normative Co-ordination: Declarative Power, Representation, and Mandate. Artificial Intelligence and Law 12 (1-2): 53-81, 2004. Copyright © Springer Science
Abstract: In this paper we provide a formal analysis of the idea of normative co-ordination. We argue that this idea is based on the assumption that agents can achieve flexible co-ordination by conferring normative positions to other agents. These positions include duties, permissions, and powers. In particular, we explain the idea of declarative power, which consists in the capacity of the power-holder of creating normative positions, involving other agents, simply by ``proclaiming'' such positions. In addition, we account also for the concepts of representation, namely the representative's capacity of acting in the name of his principal, and of mandate, which is the mandatee's duty to act as the mandator has requested. Finally, we show how the framework can be applied to represent the contract-net protocol. Some brief remarks on future research and applications conclude this contribution.
 

Guido Governatori.

Representing Business Contracts in RuleML. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems 14 (2-3): 181-216, 2005.
Abstract: This paper presents an approach for the specification and implementation of translating contracts from a human-oriented form into an executable representation for monitoring. This will be done in the setting of The task of monitoring contract execution and performance requires a logical account of deontic and defeasible aspects of legal language; currently such aspects are not covered by accordingly we show how to extend it to cover such notions. From its logical form, the contract will be thus transformed into a machine readable rule notation and eventually implemented as executable semantics via any mark-up languages depending on the client's preference, for contract monitoring purposes.
 

Guido Governatori, Joris Hulstijn, Règis Riveret, and Antonino Rotolo.

On the representation of deadlines in a rental agreement. In Arno R. Lodder and Laurens Mommers, editors, Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, pages 167-168. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2007.
Abstract: The paper provides a conceptual analysis of deadlines, represented in Temporal Modal Defeasible Logic. The typology is based on the following parameters: kind of deontic operator, maintenance or achievement, presence of explicit sanctions, and persistence after the deadline. The adequacy of the typology is validated against a case study of a rental agreement.
 

Guido Governatori and Zoran Milosevic.

A Formal Analysis of a Business Contract Language. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems 15 (4): 659-685, 2006. Copyright © World Scientific
Abstract: This paper presents a formal system for reasoning about violations of obligations in contracts. The system is based on the formalism for the representation of contrary-to-duty obligations. These are the obligations that take place when other obligations are violated as typically applied to penalties in contracts. The paper shows how this formalism can be mapped onto the key policy concepts of a contract specification language, called Business Contract Language (BCL), previously developed to express contract conditions for run time contract monitoring. The aim of this mapping is to establish a formal underpinning for this key subset of BCL.
 

Guido Governatori and Zoran Milosevic.

Dealing with contract violations: formalism and domain specific language. 9th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2005), Enschede, NL, September 19-23. pages 46-57. IEEE Computer Society, 2005. Copyright © IEEE
Abstract: This paper presents a formal system for reasoning about violations of obligations in contracts. The system is based on the formalism for the representation of contrary-to-duty obligations. These are the obligations that take place when other obligations are violated as typically applied to penalties in contracts. The paper shows how this formalism can be mapped onto the key policy concepts of a contract specification language. This language, called Business Contract Language (BCL) was previously developed to express contract conditions of relevance for run time contract monitoring. The aim of this mapping is to establish a formal underpinning for this key subset of BCL.
 

Guido Governatori and Zoran Milosevic.

An Approach for Validating BCL Contract Specifications. In Claudio Bartolini, Guido Governatori and Zoran Milosevic, editor, 2nd EDOC Workshop on Contract Architectures and Languages (CoALA 2005),Enschede, NL, 20 September, 2005.
Abstract: We continue the study, started in [5], on the formal relationships between a domain specific contract language (BCL) and the logic of violation (FCL) proposed in [6,7]. We discuss the use of logical methods for the representation and analysis of business contracts. The proposed analysis is based on the notions of normal and canonical forms of contracts expressed in FCL. Finally we present a mapping from FCL to BCL that can be used to provide an executable model of a formal representation of a contract.
 

Guido Governatori, Zoran Milosevic and Shazia Sadiq.

Compliance checking between business processes and business contracts. In Patrick C. K. Hung, editor, 10th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2006), Hong Kong, 16-20 October. pages 221-232. IEEE Computing Society, 2006. Copyright © IEEE
Abstract: It is a typical scenario that many organisations have their business processes specified independently of their business contracts. This is because of the lack of guidelines and tools that facilitate derivation of processes from contracts but also because of the traditional mindset of treating contracts separately from business processes. This paper provides a solution to one specific problem that arises from this situation, namely the lack of mechanisms to check whether business processes are compliant with business contracts. The central part of the paper are logic based formalism for describing both the semantics of contract and the semantics of compliance checking procedures.
 

Guido Governatori, Zoran Milosevic, Shazia Sadiq and Maria Orlowska.

On Compliance of business processes with business contracts Technical Report, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland. 2006.
Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of ensuring compliance of business processes, implemented within and across organisational boundaries, with the constraints stated in related business contracts. In order to deal with the complexity of this problem we propose two solutions that allow for a systematic and increasingly automated support for addressing two specific compliance issues. One solution provides a set of guidelines for progressively transforming contract conditions into business processes that are consistent with contract conditions thus avoiding violation of the rules in contract. Another solution compares rules in business contracts and rules in business processes to check for possible inconsistencies. Both approaches rely on a computer interpretable representation of contract conditions that embodies contract semantics. This semantics is described in terms of a logic based formalism allowing for the description of obligations, prohibitions, permissions and violations conditions in contracts. This semantics was based on an analysis of typical building blocks of many commercial, financial and government contracts. The study proved that our contract formalism provides a good foundation for describing key types of conditions in contracts, and has also given several insights into valuable transformation techniques and formalisms needed to establish better alignment between these two, traditionally separate areas of research and endeavour. The study also revealed a number of new areas of research, some of which we intend to address in near future.

Guido Governatori and Duy Hoang Pham.

DR-CONTRACT: An Architecture for e-Contracts in Defeasible Logic. In Claudio Bartolini, Guido Governatori and Zoran Milosevic, editors, 2nd EDOC Workshop on Contract Architectures and Languages (CoALA 2005), Enschede, NL, 20 September. 2005. Abstract: In this paper we present an architecture to represent and reason on e-Contracts based on the DR-device architecture supplemented with a deontic defeasible logic of violation. We motivate the choice for the logic and we show how to extend RuleML to capture the notions relevant to describe e-contracts for a monitoring perspective in Defeasible Logic.
 

Guido Governatori and Duy Hoang Pham.

A Semantic Web Based Architecture for e-Contracts in Defeasible Logic. In Asaf Adi, Suzette Stoutenburg and Said Tabet, editors First International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, (RuleML 2005), Galway, Ireland, November 10-12. pages 145-159. LNAI 3791. Springer, Berlin, 2005. Copyright © Springer
Abstract: We introduce the DR-CONTRACT architecture to represent and reason on e-Contracts. The architecture extends the DR-device architecture by a deontic defeasible logic of violation. We motivate the choice for the logic and we show how to extend to capture the notions relevant to describe e-contracts for a monitoring perspective in Defeasible Logic.
 

Guido Governatori and Antonino Rotolo.

Representing Contracts Using RuleML. In Thomas Gordon, editor, Legal Knowledge and Information Systems pages 141-150. Frontieres in Artificial Intelligence and Applications 120. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2004.
Abstract: This paper presents an approach for the specification and implementation of e-contracts for Web monitoring. This is done in the setting of RuleML. We argue that monitoring contract execution requires also a logical account of deontic concepts and of violations. Accordingly, RuleML is extended to cover these aspects.
 

Miao Wang and Guido Governatori.

A Logic Framework of Normative-based Contract Management. Formal Methods in Electronic Commerce 2007. Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. June 4, 2007.
Abstract: We explore of the feasibility of the computationally oriented institutional agency framework proposed by Governatori and Rotolo testing it against an industrial strength scenario. In particular we show how to encode in defeasible logic the dispute resolution policy described in Article 67 of FIDIC.