Rinke Hoekstra

LKIF Core: Principled Ontology Development for the Legal Domain

In this paper we describe a legal core ontology that is part of the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format: a knowledge representation formalism that enables the translation of legal knowledge bases written in different representation formats and formalisms. A legal (core) ontology can play an important role in the translation of existing legal knowledge bases to other representation formats, in particular as the basis for articulate knowledge serving. This requires that the ontology has a firm grounding in commonsense and is developed in a principled manner. We describe the theory and methodology underlying the LKIF core ontology, compare it with other ontologies, introduce the concepts it defines, and discuss its use in the formalisation of an EU directive.

Patents as instruments for exploring innovation dynamics: geographic and technological perspectives on photovoltaic cells

The recently developed Cooperative Patent Classifications of the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) provide new options for an informed delineation of samples in both USPTO data and the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PatStat) of EPO. Among the “technologies for the mitigation of climate change” (class Y02), we zoom in on nine material technologies for photovoltaic cells; and focus on one of them (CuInSe2) as a lead case. Two recently developed techniques for making patent maps with interactive overlays—geographical ones using Google Maps and maps based on citation relations among International Patent Classifications (IPC)—are elaborated into dynamic versions that allow for online animations and comparisons by using split screens. Various forms of animation are discussed. The longitudinal development of Rao-Stirling diversity in the IPC-based maps provided us with a heuristics for studying technological diversity in terms of generations of the technology. The longitudinal patterns are clear in USPTO data more than in PatStat data because PatStat aggregates patent information from countries in different stages of technological development, whereas one can expect USPTO patents to be competitive at the technological edge.

Proposal for a Dutch Legal XML Standard

This paper presents a proposal for an XML Standard for legal sources in the Netherlands. The standard intends to provide a generic and easily extensible framework for the XML encoding of the structure and contents of legal and paralegal documents. It differs from other existing metadata schemes for legal documents in two respects; It is language-independent and it aims to accommodate uses of XML beyond search and presentation services.

The metalex document server legal documents as versioned linked data

This paper introduces the MetaLex Document Server (MDS), an ongoing project to improve access to legal sources (regulations, court rulings) by means of a generic legal XML syntax (CEN MetaLex) and Linked Data. The MDS defines a generic conversion mechanism from legacy legal XML syntaxes to CEN MetaLex, RDF and Pajek network files, and discloses content by means of HTTP-based content negotiation, a SPARQL endpoint and a basic search interface. MDS combines a transparent (versioned) and opaque (content-based) naming scheme for URIs of parts of legal texts, allowing for tracking of version information at the URI-level, as well as reverse engineering of versioned metadata from sources that provide only partial information, such as many web-based legal content services. The MDS hosts all 28k national regulations of the Netherlands available since May 2011, comprising some 100M triples.

YASGUI: Not Just Another SPARQL Client

This paper introduces YASGUI, a user-friendly SPARQL client. We compare YASGUI with other SPARQL clients, and show the added value and ease of integrating Web APIs, services, and new technologies such as HTML5. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges we encountered in using these technologies for a building robust and feature rich web application.

Polishing Diamonds in OWL 2

A recurrent pattern in the representation of actions and processes is the notion of exchange. It is a concept primarily characterised by a structure of processes or actions, rather than inherent properties, but has a strong ontological flavour. Exchange is furthermore governed by reciprocity, reflected by the way in which roles are constrained. Representing exchange and other structured objects in an ontology poses a number of conceptual and technical problems. While these concepts require a diamond like structure, DLs are generally restricted to tree structures only. Constraints on the identity of the individuals that fill the roles in e.g. transactions cannot be enforced directly in the A-Box. In this paper we present a knowledge pattern and methodology for approximating such structures.

MetaVex: Regulation Drafting Meets the Semantic Web

Currently almost all legislative bodies throughout Europe use general purpose word-processing software for the drafting of legal documents. These regular word processors do not provide specific support for legislative drafters and parliamentarians to facilitate the legislative process. Furthermore, they do not natively support metadata on regulations. This paper describes how the MetaLex regulation-drafting environment (MetaVex) aims to meet such requirements.

PROV-O-Viz - Understanding the Role of Activities in Provenance

This paper presents PROV-O-Viz, a Web-based visualization tool for PROV-based provenance traces coming from various sources, that leverages Sankey Diagrams to reflect the flow of information through activities. We briefly discuss the advantages of this approach compared to other provenance visualization tools. PROV-O-Viz has already been used to visualize provenance traces generated by very different applications.

Automatic extraction of legal concepts and definitions

In this paper we present the results of an experiment in automatic concept and definition extraction from written sources of law using relatively simple natural language and standard semantic web technology. The software was tested on six laws from the tax domain.

Commonsense causal explanation in a legal domain

In this paper, we present an approach to commonsense causal explanation of stories that can be used for automatically determining the liable party in legal case descriptions. The approach is based on