Rules for Representing and Handling Contracts

E-business contracts comprise conventions regarding the behavior of the agents, including obligations, rights and permissions. Contract handling refers to contract negotiation, ratification and monitoring. Negotiation and ratification are accomplished through communication protocols. For monitoring purposes, agents have to reason on actions, and their effects on the evolution of the commitments in the contract. As first steps towards the automation of contract handling processes in eCommerce, we suggest an agent model based on rules in a non-monotonic logic, analyze contract reasoning, and interaction protocols.