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Subject: Minutes Draft from the OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Contracts Technical Committee Secretary (File id: @@2443)


Minutes of OASIS Legal XML Member Section e-Contracts Technical Committee
                     Teleconference of October 19th 

Present

Mr. Rolly Chambers
Dr. Zoran Milosevic
Dr. Laurence Leff
Mr. Peter Meyer
Mr. Daniel Greenwood
Mr. Jason Harrop

Came to order at about 17:08

We began a discussion of when XML will be used in
contracts and the possibilities of using more data in contracts.

The first item was continuing the discussion of the Requirements Document
www.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-econtracts/200410/msg00003.html
(The Document)

The following suggestions were made:

Perhaps, one should provide a reference for the notation used in the
data flow diagrams.

What is the output from the process "Reaching Handshake Agreement."  Possibility
includes what is known in some quarters as a "term sheet" but it might
just be "oral."

Should we distinguish between an "evidentiary contract document" vs. an
"Assent Document."  We will not use the term "evidentiary contract document."

We also discussed quite a bit signature terminology and their relationship
to "esign" laws in the United States and Europe.

Our discussion then moved to the next item on the agenda, terminology. 
There was also reference to Dr. Milosevic's communication of
October 20th:
   http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/legalxml-econtracts/email/archives/200410/msg00011.html

Should we distinguish between "human contract language" and 
machine-interpretable and "machine-readable" language as 
used in Section 4.9 of the Document.

This led to a contract of "human contract language" or
"Narrative Language" vs "Machine-interpretable
Language" or "Machine-Readable Language" 
particularly as contrasted
with "computer contract language," "embedded data," 
"structural markup," ""Contract Semantic Language," 
and "Precise Modelling Language."
Language"


We ended with the apparent concensus that we would divide our work into

a) Generic structural markup, an ordered hierarchy of components
b) Embedded Date, Price, etc. which would be termed "embedded Data values"
   and this might be included in text or what was termed "the narrative."
c) a description of the rights, obligations, and permissions of the parties
   which would be termed "deontic" since that term is used already in
   academic articles on the subject of contracts, particularly as 
   written by computer scientists.
d) Contract Metadata; we might draw an analogy or comparison with "Dublin
   Core" to signify the type of things, information about the contract,
   that would appear in the "Contract Metadata" without constraining us
   to use similar concepts or markup to the Dublin Core.

The totality of what we produced would be given some "overarching
term" which might appear in marketing literature.  The term "Contract XML"
was considered the canddidate at the end, but "Contract Modelling Language"
was also considered.  An analogy was drawn to the "Unified Modelling Language"
which has various aspects such as "state charts," "activity diagrams," and
"collaboration diagrams."

We also decided to use the term "natural language" for that
which we might have referred to as "human contract language"
or "human language" as that is the term of art in computer science and
artificial intelligence.
It may be convenient to talk about "narrative" particularly for "grammatical
reasons."  We recognized that a contract can be expressed as a combination of
natural language and computer contract language.

We also discussed the lifetime for these terms and whether the terms
we use now to talk with each other and think about the requirements
might not be the terms that would appear in a final document that we
would share with others.

We also discussed "precedents" and "Contract Templates."  The latter is a 
partially completed contract, but the TC decided that wasn't a key 
concept now.

Our meeting originally scheduled for November Third was moved to
November Ninth at our regular time
because of conflicts with one member's travel schedule.


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