A CNL for Contract-Oriented Diagrams

TL;DR

This paper introduces a visual and textual framework for creating and managing contract diagrams that specify obligations, permissions, and penalties, with a web tool for editing and visualization.

Contribution

It presents a Controlled Natural Language (CNL) for verbalizing Contract-Oriented Diagrams and develops web-based tools for editing and visualizing these diagrams.

Findings

Proof-of-concept tools demonstrate practical usability.

The framework effectively captures contractual obligations and penalties.

Interactive visualization aids in understanding contract structures.

Abstract

We present a first step towards a framework for defining and manipulating normative documents or contracts described as Contract-Oriented (C-O) Diagrams. These diagrams provide a visual representation for such texts, giving the possibility to express a signatory's obligations, permissions and prohibitions, with or without timing constraints, as well as the penalties resulting from the non-fulfilment of a contract. This work presents a CNL for verbalising C-O Diagrams, a web-based tool allowing editing in this CNL, and another for visualising and manipulating the diagrams interactively. We then show how these proof-of-concept tools can be used by applying them to a small example.