Conversation-oriented protocols for contract negotiations

The expression of contracts in computer readable form, and the development of automated tests for completeness and well-formedness of contracts, has opened the door to significant advances in automating contract negotiation. To meet the needs of automation, such negotiations must follow explicitly specified message-exchange protocols. But to meet the needs of the negotiating parties, these protocols must be independent of the decision-making processes driving them as well as neutral to the outcome of the negotiations. In this paper we illustrate how both needs may be simultaneously met by a small set of conversation policies employed within a general purpose conversation support architecture.