Transforming agreements into contracts

Abstract

During the life cycle of a service consumer-provider relationship, agreements are reached in a variety of areas covering technical, service, business and legal issues. Although some of these agreements may be viewed as legally binding, it is unlikely that any of them will constitute a legal contract in the full sense of the word. It is often expedient to gather these agreements and create a legal contract out of them. Automating this process of contract generation can speed up the process and reduce the cost of legal expenses. In fact, the process of automated contract generation can also be useful outside the realm of web services, when agreements are made directly among people. We propose a way of transforming such agreements into contracts in a dynamic, efficient and speedy manner, using advanced forms of matchmaking technology in a novel way. This complements the other directions in which the agreements are to be used, namely configuration, instantiation, enactment supervision and relationship termination and evaluation. © World Scientific Publishing Company.