Re: [ubl-dev] Is Catalogue provisioning a kind of contract forming?

[Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

Cool questions.
Just to draw your attention to part of the UBL 2.0 official
spec (my highlighting)

"4. UBL 2.0 Context of Use

The processes described in this section, and the business rules associated with them, define a context for the use of UBL 2.0 business documents. They are normative insofar as they provide semantics for the UBL document schemas, but they should not be construed as limiting the application of those schemas."

Hopefully this answers your question about 'stretching the

semantics'. The semantics are based on but not limited to

the assumptions about the processes using the documents.

If you want a Catalogue to be issued without a response then

that is not prohibited by the semantics of the UBL Catalogue.

I think the semantics you are really looking for though is to

be found more in contract law than in the UBL specs. The

best thing might be (and I'm not legally competant to give any 

hard and fast advice here) to look at contract law in relation

to the countries where your website will be used as the way

a contract becomes binding does, I think, depend on locality

and laws of countries of parties involved (and across borders

it gets tricky and may require specialised knowledge). I get

the impression it is fairly broadly understood that a contract

requires a response but that various documents can lead up

to the eventual forming of a contract which are themselves

not contractual - such as offers and invitations to treat and

the catalogue in some contexts can be part of what might

in some cases form an 'offer'. Best to read up a bit on the

relevant contract laws. It's potentially a risky area for anyone

not aware of these laws - in case you make your catalogue

something you can be bound to honour, as with general issues

around online catalogues. Nothing that UBL would want to

try to provide any advice on. That detail of the legal use of the

documents is out of scope (thankfully!) for UBL TC and you

have to seek your own legal advice on such things.

Good questions though.

Best regards

Steve
---
Stephen D Green



On 4 February 2010 10:37, Jan Algermissen <algermissen1971@mac.com> wrote:
>
> I saw yesterday that a contract needs to be acknowledged by the receiver. Is that an essential part of the sourcing process?
>
> Could this acknowledgement be 'skipped'?
>
> I am asking because I am using UBL for a little 'experiment'[1][2] and would like to avoid bending the intended UBL semantics too much.
>
> In this particular case, I plan to make a catalogue available as a Web resource and while the catalogue creation can be requested by the client (the receiver) it would be kind of odd to send an ack message to the server (the provider) to indicate agreement to the catalogue.
>
> OTH, if that agreement is vital I would still like to include it in my experiment.
>
> BTW: I is there any material that covers such issues or is that common procurement knowledge (that I just happen to lack)?
>
> Jan
>
> [1] http://www.nordsc.com/blog/?p=202
> [2] http://www.nordsc.com/blog/?p=204
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------
>  Jan Algermissen, Consultant
>  NORD Software Consulting
>
>  Mail: algermissen@acm.org
>  Blog: http://www.nordsc.com/blog/
>  Work: http://www.nordsc.com/
> -----------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: ubl-dev-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: ubl-dev-help@lists.oasis-open.org
>