Automated negotiation from declarative contract descriptions

We present and implement an infrastructure for automating the negotiation of business contracts. Underlying our system is a declarative language for both (1) fully-specified, executable contracts and (2) partially-specified contracts that are in the midst of being negotiated, specifically via automated auctions. The language is based on Courteous Logic Programs, a form of logic-based knowledge representation. In our current prototype, we use this language to specify (1) high-level knowledge about alternative negotiation structures, (2) general-case rules about auction parameters, (3) rules to map the auction parameters to a specific auction platform (the Michigan Internet AuctionBot), and (4) specialcase rules for specific domains, including rules from potential buyers and sellers about capabilities, constraints, and preferences. By performing inferencing on the rule sets and interfacing to our auction server, our prototype is able to automatically configure a set of auctions, t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: AGENTS
• Authors: Daniel M. Reeves, Michael P. Wellman, Benjamin N. Grosof
• Keywords: AGENTS 2001, Auction Parameters, Auctions, Logic-based Knowledge Representation, Security Privacy