[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]
Subject: Minutes Draft from the OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Contracts Technical Committee Secretary
Minutes Teleconference of March 26th Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Legal XML Member Section E-Contracts Technical Committee (TC) Present Rolly Chambers Dan Greenwood Jason Harrop Jim Keane Laurence L. Leff, Ph.D. Sergio Maldonado John Messing Zorran Milosovic 4:01 Eastern Time The Technical Committee discussed the minutes. There was a draft minutes submitted by the Chairperson; also Jason Harrop, co-chair submitted his own recollections of the March 12th meeting. The committee decided to use the term "Structural Markup" instead of "Clause Model." It also decided to use the term "Legal Markup" instead of "Obligation Model" The latter will include workflow processes and sequencing. At first, Mr. Greenwood submitted a motion to Table the minutes while the co-chairs and secretaries resolved the best way to word the minutes. However, this motion was removed and the TC committee decided Mr. Harrop's recollections would be appended to the minutes as already prepared by the Technical Committee's secretary. Mr. Harrop walked the participants through the template for an information item, as found in the latest draft of the Enterprise Contract Scenario, posted March 25th. This was marked up with the new "data dictionary" elements. (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-econtracts/200303/msg00008.html). This included It was agreed, that we would use the template attached thereto for capturing an information item used in one or more scenarios. However, there may be suggestions later after we try it out. It was also anticipated that the members would try this out on various scenarios as discussed in the March 12th minutes. Some information items may only be relevant to specific contracts. This might be specified by naming a scenario simply as "all contracts with" specific terms. Mr. Keane said that the Online Dispute Resolution Technical group was excited about how dispute clauses in contracts could be marked up for Online Dispute Resolution and also how a cluase gets into the ODR process. The e-Contracts Technical Committee decided it will work with the ODR committee with Messrs. Chambers, Greenwood, Keane and Milosovic leading the way. In particular, they will look at dispute resolution clauses in contracts from construction. Mr. Chambers will provide sample clauses. Also, Dr. Leff will forward information to the list about work being done by Michael Merz on electronic contracting for the construction industry. Furthermore, he will contact Mr. Merz as Technical Committee Secretary to get the best URL and to follow up on intellectual property issues. This began a discussion regarding issues in intellectual property for information submitted to the Technical Committee and the licensing arrangements possible for information that was to be put in the standard. This might be different for information brought to the attention of the technical committee but which might not be part of a standard. At 1659, the Secretary excused himself from the teleconference to teach his class. In order to understand some of the issues which are likely to arise in filling out the template for any given information item, we looked at the "Contract Term" item as an example. - we changed its name to "Contract Period or Duration", in part to avoid confusion between Contract Term, and a term of a contract. Some debate as to which of "period" and "duration" is preferable. - Sergio Maldonado noted that the concept of commencement and duration is also relevant at the level of an individual term (ie clause) of a contract, since obligations might commence and cease at different times. - we changed this item to "Optional", given that a contract may be silent as to duration (in which case the law will imply a reasonable time) - where the contract is silent as to duration, this information item could have a value of "open" or "unspecified", since it is useful to be able to search for such contracts. - "management of a contract" as a reason for capturing this item, was seen as perhaps to broad a rationale to be useful. More detail was suggested, one example being the time-based events commencement and expiration can triggger. Discussion flowed over to the "Contract Event" information item. Mr. Chambers noted that the significance of a Contract Event is that when one occurs, there is a "state change" which affects the relationship between the parties. Members noted that noted that there are different concepts of type, including a fixed point in time (a date), and an interval/duration. W3C XML Schema has a data type for representing duration. It was agreed that two extra fields would be added to the template for an information item: 1. "See Also", which is hyperlinks to information items related to this one. 2. "Example Clauses/Articles", which is a place to put the text (or a hyperlink to the text) of clauses which contain the information, along with any commentary or notes the author wishes to add. Mr. Harrop is to post a revised version of the Enterprise Contract Management Scenario containing these extra fields. It was agreed that HTML should be the format we continue to use for the scenarios as we add information items to them. We didn't have time to talk more specifically about the time line for completion of this work. The agenda for the next teleconference will include discussion of information items authored over the next fortnight. On the Structural Markup front, the agenda will include choosing between recursive and hierarchical clause models. The possible face-to-face meeting times/places contained in the agenda were discussed very briefly and inconclusively. The possibility of ABA in San Francisco, in August, was also suggested. The importance of organising a room soon was noted, if ABA is to be our choice. Next two teleconferences as per minutes of 12 March teleconference, namely: April 9th 16:00 Eastern, 21:00 GMT April 23rd 16:00 Eastern, 21:00 GMT Meeting closed. ** List of Action Items ** Rolly Chambers, Dan Greenwood, Jim Keane, Zorran Milosovic -- working with the Online Dispute Resolution Technical Group Rolly Chambers - provide sample clauses for dispute resolution in contracts, particularly those relating to construction contracts Laurence Leff - forward information to the list on work being done by Michael Merz on electronic contracting. He will also find out about intellectual property issues related to this work. Jason Harrop - prepare two extra fields for the template for an information item and post a revised version of the Enterprise Contract Management scenario containing these fields: 1. "See Also", which is hyperlinks to information items related to this one. 2. "Example Clauses/Articles", which is a place to put the text (or a hyperlink to the text) of clauses which contain the information, along with any commentary or notes the author wishes to add.
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]