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A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS LegalXML
eContracts Technical Committee has been proposed by the following
members of OASIS: Eddie O'Brien, Ringtail Solutions; Donald L.
Bergeron, Lexis-Nexis; Charles Gilliam, ContentGuard; and John
McClure, Data Consortium; and the following Individual members: Daniel
J. Greenwood, Jason Harrop, James Bryce Clark, John Messing, Rolly L.
Chambers, Peter Meyer, and James I. Keane.
The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC
Process (see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is
appended to this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of
purpose, list of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute
the TC's charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified
(revised) by the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well
as submissions of technology for consideration by the TC and the
beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's
first meeting.
To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an
OASIS member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify
the TC chair, Daniel J. Greenwood (dang@mit.edu) of your intent to
participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend
the first meeting on 26 September. You should also subscribe to the
TC's mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual,
and not by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the
time you time you notify the chair.
The private mail list legalxml-econtracts@lists.oasis-open.org is for
committee discussions. TC members as well as any other interested
OASIS members should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list
web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a
message to legalxml-econtracts-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the
word "subscribe" as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to
the mail list does not make you a member of the TC; to become a member
you must contact the TC chair and attend the first meeting as
described in the preceeding paragraph.)
A public comment list legalxml-econtracts-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
will be available for the public to make comments on the work of this
TC; the public may subscribe to this list by going to the mail list
web page at http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a
message to legalxml-econtracts-comment-request@lists.oasis-open.org
with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message.
The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/
</karl>
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org
Charter for eContracts Technical Committee in the LegalXML Member
Section of OASIS
1. Name of Technical Committee
The name of the committee shall be the OASIS LegalXML eContracts
Technical Committee (eContracts TC) within the LegalXML Member Section
of OASIS.
The Technical Committee may constitute the subcommittees or other
groupings as shall appear necessary and appropriate to carrying out
the Technical Committee’s purpose.
2. Purpose of the Technical Committee
A. Mission
The eContracts Technical Committee exists to develop open XML
standards for the markup of contract documents to enable the efficient
creation, maintenance, management, exchange and publication of
contract documents and contract terms.
B. Language and Applicable Legal Domain
The scope of the eContracts TC will be focused upon contracts in the
Anglo-American legal domain, including other common-law based systems.
It is expected that the TC will assume English language usage in the
XML and, to the extent it is relevant to the work of the TC, in the
language of the underlying contracts as well. However, given the
International overlay of this topic, the TC may, at its discretion and
convenience, deal with other legal systems and language domains.
C. Scope
(i). The core scope of this activity will be to the creation of DTD(s)
/ schema(s) that can be used by parties:
a. Negotiating and finalizing contracts in an application neutral
format;
b. Exchanging contract contents as valid XML;
c. Automating processing of contract content, for example for use in
contract management applications;
d. To support the production of human readable output documents; and
e. To facilitate the use of reusable or boilerplate information
within a contract.
(ii). The TC shall also define a data model or models that describe
documents forming legal contracts.
(iii). To support this scope, the TC shall seek to capture the
business requirements of end users of the proposed standards.
(iv). To help achieve this scope, the Contracts TC will facilitate,
monitor, assess and publicize tests and demonstrations of TC data
models & and DTD(s)/Schema(s).
(v). To propose adoption of particular developed model(s) & and
DTD(s)/Schema(s) as LegalXML/OASIS-Contracts standards.
(vi). Define the charter for subsequent work once (1 - 4) have been
achieved.
(vii). Given the dynamic and fast evolving nature of eContracts at
this time, it may become necessary to amend this scope during the life
of the TC. Any such amendment will not be entertained for light or
transient causes.
3. Requirements Definition
A. The eContracts TC will conduct a formal and comprehensive process
to verify the initial requirements definition in this section. That
process will include identification of relevant end-users and their
needs, including determining the extent to which downstream users such
as courts and other dispute resolution providers may impact
requirements for the work of this TC.
B. The eContracts TC will use sample contracts that any proposed
DTD(s)/Schema(s) and data model(s) must be able to represent, along
with the information in those contracts to be marked up.
C. It is initially believed that the eContracts TC has the following
requirements:
(i). XML compliant syntax shall be used for representing the contract
documents.
(ii). W3C and OASIS specifications, as well as, ISO or other
appropriate standards shall be used.
(iii). A set of XML Core Components shall be specified that can be
used universally by all eContracts DTD(s)/Schema(s). These component
specifications may include elements and attributes (e.g. unique
identifiers, creation dates, etc.), as appropriate.
4. Deliverables
A. The eContracts TC shall define business requirements of end-users
and reflect them in the TC’s scope of work. The initial requirements
definition above shall be the starting point and shall be verified and
amended as needed.
B. The eContracts TC shall complete one or more data models meeting
the requirements specified in this Charter.
C. The eContracts TC shall complete one or more DTD(s) and/or
Schema(s) meeting the requirements specified in this Charter and
deriving from the specified data model(s).
D. The TC shall create a “data dictionary” which provides the intended
meaning of each element, attribute or other component of the final
specification.
E. The TC shall create documents using sample contracts, marked up
according to the DTD(s)/Schema(s) developed by this TC.
F. Beyond creating the e-contract data model(s) and DTD(s)/Schema(s),
the TC may provide users various 'template stylesheets', CSS, XSLT,
XSL-FO to provide them with a 'starting point' to modify and create
their own.
5. Language in which the Technical Committee will conduct business
All business will be conducted in English.
6. Date and time of the first meeting
The first formal meeting of the eContracts Technical Committee is
proposed to be via a telephone conference on Thursday, September 26,
2002 at 2pm Eastern Time.
7. Meeting schedule for the year following formation of the Technical
Committee
It is proposed that the eContracts Technical Committee will hold face
to face meetings annually and also to hold quarterly telephone or web
meetings to be arranged. Meeting times, when delivered to TC members
via the list, should be expressed in terms of GMT. The dates and
times for the face to face meeting is proposed to be in the spring of
2003, and the telephone or web meetings are:
September, 2002 9/26/02, 2pm (subject to time change)
December 2002 To be determined
April, 2003 To be determined
July, 2003 To be determined
8. Names, electronic addresses and membership affiliations of persons
eligible for OASIS Technical Committee Participation committed to the
stated meeting schedule
The following OASIS members support the creation of the eContracts
Technical Committee and are committed to the stated meeting schedule:
Daniel J. Greenwood, dang@mit.edu, individual member
Jason Harrop, jharrop@speedlegal.com, individual member
Eddie O'Brien, eddie@ringtailsolutions.com, Ringtail Solutions
James Bryce Clark, jamie.clark@mmiec.com, individual member
John Messing, jmessing@law-on-line.com, individual member
Donald L. Bergeron, Donald.Bergeron@LEXIS-NEXIS.COM, Lexis-Nexis
Rolly L. Chambers, rlchambers@justice.com, individual member
James I. Keane, jik@jkeane.com, individual member
John McClure, jmcclure@hypergrove.com, Data Consortium
Peter Meyer, pmeyer@elkera.com.au, individual member
Charles Gilliam, Charles.Gilliam@contentguard.com, ContentGuard
9. Names of the Technical Committee Co-chairs and Vice-chairs
Chair: Daniel J. Greenwood
Co-Vice Chairs: Jason Harrop, Eddie O'Brien
10. Names of phone meeting sponsors
Daniel J. Greenwood
11. Names of face-to-face meeting sponsors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eCommerce Architecture Program
http://ecitizen.mit.edu
12. Policies and procedures of the eContracts Technical Committee
The eContracts Technical Committee will follow the operating rules of
OASIS and any operating rules adopted by the LegalXML Member Section
Steering Committee with the approval of OASIS management and the OASIS
Board of Directors.
In addition, the Technical Committee will abide by the following
practices:
1. All decisions on a Committee specification of a standard will be
made by vote of 2/3 or higher.
2. All decisions made subject to ratification or rejection by the full
membership of the Technical Committee on the list serve.
3. All email discussions concerning the technical work of the
Technical Committee and its subcommittees will take place on OASIS
supported list serves.
4. One member of the Technical Committee and of each subcommittee will
serve as ombudsman to monitor the public list for that entity and
provide input from the public list to the committee and subcommittee
discussions.
5. In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any
technical specification if the use, distribution, or implementation of
such specification would necessarily require the unauthorized
infringement of any third party rights, and such third party has not
agreed to provide necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free,
non-discriminatory terms.
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