Leonardo Lesmo, Guido Boella, Alessandro Mazzei, Daniele Radicioni
The activity on ontologies has been carried out in cooperation with the Department
of Scienze Giuridiche of the University of Torino. Our group has developed
a new ontological model of norms, based on previous studies on planning.
In particular, the model includes a formalization (in a LOOM-like language)
of the concepts of plan and behaviour, showing that norms are reasonably
integrated in the model as "constraints on behaviour". Within this framework,
the notion of "authority" and Hohfeld's Legal Relations find easily their
proper place. In order to apply the model to a case study, in 2002 we
have faced the problem of the ontological representation of legal Fruits.
So, a rich ontology has been developed, including notions such as Good,
Asset, Property, Contract, to which Civil Fruits have been suitably connected.
A report describing the first version of this ontology has been distributed
in December, 2002. Further details will be added in 2003, when also the
comparison with other legal systems (where the notion of Legal Fruit does
not exist) will be started up.
This research is being carried out also in partial cooperation with the
Special Interest Group on Legal Ontologies of the European Network OntoWeb,
in particular with groups located in Roma and Trento. The research takes
also advantage from the agent models described in the relative section,
and will exploit, in the next year, the treebank TUT.