Toward a Declarative Language for Negotiating Executable Contracts
Daniel M. Reeves, Benjamin N. Grosof, Michael P. Wellman · 2003
: We give an approach to automating the negotiation of business contracts. Our goal is to develop a language for both (1.) fully-specified, executable contracts and (2.) partially-specified contracts that are in the midst of being negotiated, including via automated auctions. Our starting point for this language is Courteous Logic Programs (CLP's), a form of logic-based knowledge representation (KR) that is semantically declarative, intuitively natural, computationally tractable, and practically executable. A CLP is suitable in particular to represent a fully-specified executable contract. The basic CLP KR also facilitates modification during negotiation, because it includes prioritized conflict handling features that facilitate modification. Beyond the basic CLP KR, we have developed an initial ontology, and an associated style of representation, to specify additional aspects of a partial contract and of a negotiation process. The initial ontology specifies the set of negotiables and ...