Decision support in contract formation for commercial electronic services with international connection

Abstract

This section addresses the automated and legally compliant determination of key contract parameters for commercially and internationally provided electronic services in the Internet. It designs and implements a decision support system that provides recommendations on suited contract parameters at the time of contract formation. Recommendations base on automated reasoning taking into consideration the relevant set of service- and contract-specific facts. The range of facts to be considered is imposed by the laws of these states that have sufficient connection with the international service contract to be concluded. Accordingly, this section develops and documents the solid basis for the decision support system, consisting of an information model that integrates perspectives of service and contract management as well as in a detailed method to formally model the legal basis for machine execution. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.