Legally relevant events

Dear all,

Let me introduce myself before I ask my question. I am the project team 
lead for a UN project UN/CEFACT Unified Business Agreements and 
Contracts (UBAC for short). We are looking at creating a foundation for 
executable business relationships and contracts. In order to later find 
a solution we are looking into business behavior and legal relations 
such as right, duties etc. We are also creating a Academic Advisory 
Board in order to inform the project of research results and activities. 
This board is chaired by Prof William E. McCarthy, Michigan State Univ. 
He is the founder of REA ontology. Our first activity is an 
International Symposium on Unified Business Agereements and Contract in 
Stockholm 5-6 dec 2003. In the program chair is also Prof Paul 
Johannesson, The Royal Instityte of Technology.

With this as a background I would like to ask a question that revolves 
around events. In a world of electronic commerce between multiple actors 
the event concept is important fo rmany reasons One of those reasons are 
legal. Legally relevant events may be different from ther event 
information existing in a business system An example: a party A pays 
money to a bank and to B's account. This legally relevant event is not 
know to B until someone informs B that the payment event has occured. 
This discepancy may cause disputes.

Sofar I ve identified 11 aspects of event: Definition, Prescription, 
Anticipation, Emergent event, Occurrence, Observation, Recording, 
Communication, Acceptance, Effectualization, PostEffectualization.

The questions: Is DAML-S working of the event semantics in other 
perspectives such as economic contracts ?
It would also be interesting to read more about ontologies with an 
elaborate event sub-ontologies, does anyone know about such work?


Thanks
/Anders W. Tell

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Received on Saturday, 27 September 2003 12:56:16 UTC