ContrattoA Ontology
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
A ContrattoA Ontology is a Legal Ontology specifically developed for the semantic annotation of legal contracts.
- Context:
- It can enhances the UFO-L Framework to better address the requirements of Contract Law, integrating concepts from Hohfeld's Theory of Legal Positions.
- It can (typically) enhance the semantic processing and understanding of Legal Contracts through structured Annotation and Analysis.
- It can (often) facilitate the conversion of Natural Language Documents into Formal Specifications, providing a foundation for Smart Contracts.
- It can be used to improve Contract Management Systems by enabling features like compliance checking and automated management.
- It can serve as a tool for Algorithmic Analysis of Legal Documents, utilizing model checkers and semantic annotations to aid in this process.
- It can utilize Semantic Web Technologies in Legal Informatics to improve the interoperability and effectiveness of legal informatics tools.
- ...
- Example(s):
- ...
- Counter-Example(s):
- ...
- See: Semantic Annotation, UFO-L Ontology, Smart Contract Conversion, Hohfeldian Analysis.
References
2022
- (Soavi et al., 2022) ⇒ Michele Soavi, Nicola Zeni, John Mylopoulos, and Luisa Mich. (2022). "Semantic Annotation of Legal Contracts with ContrattoA." In: Informatics. doi:10.3390/informatics9040072
- NOTE: This paper details the use of the ContrattoA Ontology in enhancing the semantic annotation of legal contracts, emphasizing its role in the efficient interpretation and management of legal texts.
- QUOTE: The concepts included in the ontology are as follows:
- Contract: a collection of obligations and powers between two or more roles, which are assigned to parties during contract execution, and are concerned with two or more assets respectively associated with each role. Contracts may involve subcontracting that assigns to third parties the responsibility for the fulfilment of obligations.
- Asset: an owned (tangible or intangible) item of value that serves as contractual consideration. Assets constitute the benefits contracting parties get out of a contract. Asset quantity and quality constraints are typically specified in contracts or are defined as contract parameters that vary from execution to execution.
- Legal Position: a legal relationship between two roles. We consider only two such relationships: obligation and power, since these can account for all eight proposed by Hohfeld, according to our study of legal contracts.
- Obligation: the legal duty of a debtor towards a creditor to bring about a certain legal situation (consequent) when another legal situation (antecedent) holds. Surviving obligations remain in effect after the termination of the contract, such as a 6-month nondisclosure obligation after the end of a contract. Obligations usually concern assets and are instantiated by triggers. When debtor A has an obligation towards creditor B, then B has a right towards A.
- Power: the right of a party, the creditor, to create, change, suspend, or cancel legal positions. A power is instantiated by a trigger and has an antecedent (legal situation) that must be met for it to come into effect, as well as a consequent that the creditor can make true.
- Legal Situation: a type of situation associated with a contract, obligation, or power instance. Situations are states-of-affairs and are comprised of entities and relationships. A situation occurs during a time interval T and holds during any subinterval of T.
- Event: a happening that occurs at a time point and cannot change. Events have pre-state and post-state situations. For example, delivered is an event whose pre-state is the situation ‘being in transit’ and post-state is the situation ‘being at its destination point’.
- Role: a placeholder for a party participating in obligations and powers that assign to it responsibilities and rights.
- Party: a legal agent (person or institution) who owns assets and who is assigned roles in contracts.