July 16th draft minutes

["Dave Marvit" <dave@marvit.org>]

Folks,

Below are the draft minutes for our last teleconference (July 16th).
John McClure was good enough to honor my request that he review the
minutes before this posting (thanks John) so I am much more comfortable
with their accuracy. Even so, if anyone has any comments, corrections,
or additions, please let me know and I'll revise the minutes.

Thanks,

Dave Marvit
Fujitsu Labs of America
dave@marvit.org

--------------------------------------

Draft Minutes (Version 1)
OASIS LegalXML eContracts Technical Committee
July 18, 2003 Conference Call

Summary:

- John McClure presents the work he has done with the data Consortium
- Some discussion about schedule of the face to face meeting. 12 to 5 pm
on Saturday the 9th should be blocked out. Events Sunday are TBD.

----------------------

The following were present:


Rolly Chambers
Dave Marvit
Barry Hansen
Zorin Milosevic
John McClure
Dan Greenwood
Jason Harrop
Jim Kaene

Meeting begins:

DG: John, you have guests on line?

John McClure: No, not yet.

DG: We have granted permission to folks from the Data Consortium to join
us and listen in.

(Roll  is read)

DG Moves to accept the minutes.

Rolly seconds

The minutes are unanimously approved

DG: Today's main agenda item is to have John McClure present the work he
has been doing with the data consortium. John, Would you please provide
some background information for the group?

JM: Sure.  I am the architect of the data consortium. It started 2 years
ago. The objective is to develop the standards for XML documents for the
real-estate industry that may be exchanged across the net.

The documents of interest are leases and purchase agreements. The goal
is to extract information from these documents.

The documents that we have submitted describing this is what we are
going to discuss today.

DM: So this is designed to cover just leases and PAs? Or is that merely
the application you want to discuss today?

JM: For now, it is just leases.

Rolly: I have seen stuff from PRIA (land records folks) working on XML
markup for recording of real-estate transactions. I have also seen
MISMO. Are your efforts coordinated with these guys?

JM: Yes, and others including PISCES - which is an organization in
Europe that is used to exchange valuation info related to commercial
properties.

The objective is to extract information from the lease contract as
written.

The document describing this work is posted on our internal web site,
and I have sent out an updated version with working links.

I admit that the specific format of the document does not accord with
the format that was put on the table after this was written. Even so,
this document has the same kind of information that Jason's format was
designed to capture.

In line with the notion that we are trying to identify requirements,
there is not much XML in the document.

This contains many information elements.
1. Elements related to the structure of the document. I acknowledge that
some of these (article, section, and clause) are related to a separate
effort by the group. But what we really want to talk about are the
semantic elements.

To a certain extent we want to extract the semantic elements. This ties
into Rolly's work because many of these elements are dedicated to
describing events considered in the contract.  Here I will go into a bit
more detail because I am trying to support a particular model.

Please see requirement 105. The 4 types of goods that a contract is
concerned with are: goods, goodwill, premises, and service.

'Goodwill' is intangible. 'Premises' is the primary thing provided.
'Services' can be provided to the lessee. Goods (again) are items that
are tangible (or intangible) that can be identified within the scope of
the contract.

With respect to these goods, there are 4 types of events that fall out.

1 generic event is specified that we call a 'contract event' This
provides the capability to specify an event related to the economic
goods that may occur, have occurred, or will occur.

The different sets of events:
Events related economic goods in particular: The contract may identify
events concerned with the requisition of an economic good. (see part
106, 107, 108) These can be historical (or statements abut events that
happened in the past). These are discussed in 106.

In 107 we talk about prospective events -- events that are specifically
scheduled to occur.

In section 108 we describe terms related to events that could occur
during the contract period. The naming of these are intended to
highlight the fact that a contract can describe events that occurred in
the past, those that are supposed to occur in the future, and those that
could prospectively occur.

DM: So there are two categories of future events...?

JM: Of the events that are scheduled to occur in the future, 13 are
related to the goods themselves. Procurement, purchase, delivery, etc.

Delivery is a good example. The contract can identify the delivery of a
particular good, or it could talk about the delivery of a physical
premises. It could talk about the delivery of a service (and when the
service is to be delivered). Or we could talk about the delivery of good
will.

The notion of delivering a premises is reasonable to establish. Within
the schema of scheduled delivery we are describing what is being
delivered.

There are 13 different events that are related to the exchange and
modification of goods.

DM: Are these lists meant to be exhaustive?

JM: I think that they are exhaustive enough for now. I think that these
cover the gamut of events describing the exchange of economic goods and
subsequent financial events - the payments of consideration.

Under billing term schema: I have tried to organize the types of
financial quantities that can be applied. So for billing terms (which
describes an invoice for goods and services) we describe charges,
escalations, discounts, and taxes.

A billing event may include information relating to (can point to) an
acceptance event for which the billing is occurring. It also can
identify the address to which the remittance is to be made. The billing
event also identifies who is doing the billing and who is being billed.

The billing failure schema - this is a schema used to describe a billing
that fails to occur. The billing failure term describes terms that are
likely to kick in if billing fails to occur.

DG: I don't want to interrupt, but we are 45 minutes into the call. You
can continue to provide a recitation, or we can open up for comments
from the group. It is up to you.

JM: Sure. I have also created roles. I have 28 different roles. I would
like to table this for a moment, and perhaps we could continue this in
the next call. There is a lot of work here that is related to the
semantic content of a contract.

DG: Thanks. This is an incredible body of work. This reveals a mature
level of thinking.

Zoran: Thanks. This is a good comprehensive summary of events. Have you
experimented with any real world systems? How well does this fit actual
leases and other documents that are not leases? I just want to get a
feel for extending this to other documents.

JM: I am personally working on systems that allow markup of real estate
documents. I think that the ease of use [in different domains]is
dependent upon the UIs.  Personally I am not a fan of tools that are
based upon DTDs.

Rolly: What parts of the work you have presented here tie in most
closely to the work I presented last time? It seems to me that you are
dealing with cancellation or termination, billing, and the general
concept of events. Are there other things?

JM: In terms of the relation to your document I'd say that obligations
is the area where this provides more meat. Rather than describing an
obligation, I'd say that if we identify the event, and the people that
are called upon perform that event, an obligation emerges. I have tried
to identify those events that people are obligated to perform (if the
contract identifies contingent events or events that are supposed to
occur.) I see a close relationship there.

DG: I would find a very simple rendition of scenarios quite useful. It
would make it easier to manage the breadth and depth that is here. It
would be helpful to have a brochure-level description of how this would
be used.

JM: I'm a bit confused. You are not asking for markup.

Rolly: I think we are trying to get a simplified example that would
allow us to step back form all of the trees that we are seeing to get to
the forest.

DG: Some basic uses would help us get into it better.

DM: Is there some doc you have written that describes the underlying
philosophy?

JM: No. I haven't written one.

DG: I am looking for something that would describe the sample use cases
in terms of value propositions.

If I can offer some feedback, I think that this works well for leases. I
don't think that the best way to use this is to try to apply it to all
contracts. I think it works best for what it was designed from, realty.
There is a lot that can be genericized and that we can learn from. But
it is still best for leases.

JM: I have to disagree. I have tried to describe this in terms of
generic exchange of goods.

DG: To give a couple of examples, I don't know if you have seen a global
derivatives contract. The language and logic is different from most
contracts. And there are many other examples of contracts that seem
quite unique. I don't think that we are, nor should we say we are,
everything to everyone for all contracts.

JM: My own opinion is really quite the opposite. It does make sense to
specify a generic set of containers that can be used for specific
domains. Even in the case of derivatives... one can use the more generic
elements to describe events specific to a specialized domain.

I do believe that it is important to provide a set of elements that can
be used generically rather that having different schemas for
real-estate, construction, and for something else.

Rolly: I can appreciate that from the developers' perspective. But there
is such a difference in the law that I would tend to be skeptical about
the one size fits all approach.

DG: I am glad that we have surfaced this issue. I don't think this is
the time to resolve this issue, but think that we should return to it
later.

JM: Well, I would like to propose that we have another meeting to
discuss the supporting material that you have asked me to put out.

DG: There is merit to discussing the supporting materials. But we also
have other scenarios to discuss. Perhaps 1/2 a meeting? Jason, would you
mind if we deferred the clause model discussion until the next meeting?

JH: I don't mind at all. I didn't ask for it to be put on the agenda.

DG: As for meeting places, the two locations are in the Hyatt meeting
room, and Dave Marvit's house. Unless the Hyatt meeting room is sorted
out quickly then I'm inclined to go with Dave's offer. Jim?

JK: I have arranged to get 1 room for Friday afternoon and Saturday
afternoon and I can do what I want it. eContracts, eFiling etc...

I want to get one room equipped with web conferencing facilities. The
costs in the Hyatt are likely to be prohibitive. So we may just try to
get a phone line and do a telephone conference with a little bit of
visual support.

The downside of having them in two different locations is that we will
have some time conflicts.

DG: The other benefit is that if we have them close together is that we
might get more members interested.

The other big thing to work out is to discuss how to use our time there.
We will have to think about how to structure the agenda. If people have
suggestions please pass them along.

The only other thing to discuss is that Dr. Leff has sent out a great
number of requests for info about getting  a set of proceedings
published. We will look forward to hearing something back on those soon.

Saturday the 9th from 12 to 5 is the time currently blocked out for our
face to face.

JH: There was some discussion about continuing into Sunday. Is that on
or off? Personally I am going to be in SF and I am not flying out until
2 on Sunday afternoon.

DG: Why don't we wait until we know what rooms are available.

JK: The ODR group will meet from 8 to 9 on Sunday morning. We have
discussed having a breakfast. If we can coordinate with that...

DG: Any new business? (None)

DG: Great. We will send out an email shortly with the next few scenarios
and an agenda.

Meeting adjourned.