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A Time-Aware Model for Legal Smart Contracts

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Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling (BPMDS 2023, EMMSAD 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 479))

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Abstract

Smart Contracts that embody real world legal contracts require not only a sound and secure implementation but also a careful analysis of the underlying contractual commitments. Temporal clauses are abundant in contracts, requiring permissions and obligations to be executed in temporal relationships with observed events. Before signing a contract a thorough analysis, whether breaches of temporal clauses are imminent, whether all temporal obligations can be fulfilled are inevitable to avoid the cost of violating temporal commitments. We present a contract model that focuses on modeling temporal commitments explicitly. And we present techniques based on these contract models to analyze the temporal properties of contracts, in particular, whether a party can guarantee to fulfill all temporal commitments under all foreseeable circumstances. We present a framework that supports the development and negotiation of contracts precluding the risk of violating temporal clauses.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The GitLab repository for the designer tool is available under https://git-isys.aau.at/ics/Papers/temporal-process-designer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics-Systems, Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria

    Josef Lubas & Johann Eder

Authors
  1. Josef Lubas
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  2. Johann Eder
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Correspondence to Josef Lubas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Han van der Aa

  2. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Dominik Bork

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Henderik A. Proper

  4. Munich University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany

    Rainer Schmidt

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Lubas, J., Eder, J. (2023). A Time-Aware Model for Legal Smart Contracts. In: van der Aa, H., Bork, D., Proper, H.A., Schmidt, R. (eds) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. BPMDS EMMSAD 2023 2023. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 479. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34241-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34241-7_9

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