Agenda for upcoming meeting from the OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Contracts Technical Committee Secretary (File id: @@2289)

["Dr. Laurence Leff" <D-Leff@wiu.edu>]

                     Minutes Teleconference of September 17th
     Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
                                    (OASIS)
                           Legal XML Member Section
                       E-Contracts Technical Committee (TC)

Present

Dan Greenwood
Jason Harrop
Laurence L. Leff, Ph.D.
John McClure
Peter Meyer

Approving minutes of the previous meeting was deferred to the next 
teleconference.

Mr. Peter Meyer presented his scenario:
XML in enterprise documentation systems (Mr. Peter Mayer)

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-econtracts/200305/msg00006.html

This provides DTD and Technologies for all law firm needs including litigation
and contracts.  One of Mr. Meyers' major concerns is structural markup that
is useful for many types of documents.

Several issues were brought up:

1) The contrast between mainstream tools such as Microsoft Word
   and markup of structure

2) Is there value to have a general purpose model for a large range of uses.

3) The chief counsel of Paypal agreed to allow their contracts to be used
   as an exemplar for our work.

4) Document Management includes recording the items to which the parties agreed.

5) Is there a reason to refer to "electronic contracts" as distinguished
   between ordinary contracts?

   One of the members pointed out that there are specific issues for contracts
   electronically agreed to or whose management may involve electronic
   communications.  These issues are presented by recent legislation passed 
   within the United States.

6) To what extent would a structural markup useful for business
   purposes other than contracts be outside of the scope of this Technical
   Committee?  On the other hand, there are advantages and issues of acceptance
   when firms could use the same tools for preparing contracts as for
   letters and other documents.

7) DocBook is too complicated and may be too inflexible and thus some 
   members feel it should be rejected for the clause model.

8) The markup of event-obligations (legal semantics) should be overlayed
   on the structural markup.  A proposal was made that the semantic
   markup should be interchanged with markup including SVG and XHTML.
   Several members expressed strong agreement that this was a good idea.

9) There are two ways contracts could be formed.  A series of drafts could
   be exchanged until one is signed by both parties.  This is the way large
   and complicated "deals" are consummated today.  Or, one can follow classical
   contract law scenario with offers, acceptances, and counterproposals. 

   There may be a need for markup of "envelopes" for these exchanges.

10)The proposal should be neutral with respect to artifacts; XML should not
   be in contracts.

11)There is tension between problems with existing "silos" vs. creating our
   own.  Can we create a better "silo" that would meet many people's needs.
   There is a goal for XML markup from which one can create a wide variety
   of presentation models.

The requirements discussion was deferred to the next meeting.

Daniel Greenwood closed by saying that the presentations of scenarios
provided an opportunity for each Technical Committee member to present
their world view.  These presentations have not resolved the issues nor
has the Technical Committee determined what is in or "out of scope."

Electronic mail will be used for management of the face-to-face to be
held in Sydney  and any teleconferences related to that.  The Sydney 
face-to-face will be considered an informal discussion as few members
were anticipated at this face-to-face.