LEA 2005

 LEA 2005 

Workshop on the law and electronic agents
 
  
 
Call for Papers 
 
The fourth Workshop on the Law and Electronic Agents (LEA 2005) will be held in Bologna on Friday 10 June 2005, as a workshop of the 9th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2005)
  
Scope 
Recent years have seen an increasing deployment of electronic agents (or software agents) for numerous network applications such as personalised information management, electronic commerce and management of commercial processes. As electronic agents enter the information
environment and electronic marketplaces, they engage in a number of activities which are significant for the law: accessing computer systems and networks, retrieving and spreading information, mediating personal and business relations, buying and selling material and immaterial goods. Through such activities agents may trigger off relevant consequences for their users, owners and developers, as well as their counter-parties, consequences pertaining to different areas of the law, such as contract, tort, criminal responsibility, intellectual property
and data protection. How to legally conceptualise and regulate agent-based interaction is both a stimulating theme for lawyers and legal theorists, and a crucial issue for the success of agent-based applications and the secure development of the information society. But there is also the challenge to customise electronic agents for the support of lawyers. The workshop aims at providing a forum for investigating the law of electronic agents, keeping into account the
most recent advances in the study of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, as well as the societal, economic and legal framework in which agent-based systems are employed. 

Topics of interest
 Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 
Legal capacity and personality of agents
Legal relevance of mental states of agents (intention, negligence, etc.)
Ownership and other entitlements over agents
Agents as holders of rights, duties and powers
Agents as legal representatives
Agents as mediators in legal transactions
Agent-to-agent and agent-to-human interaction in a legal perspective
Contracts made through/by electronic agents (contractual liability)
Liability for the damage caused by electronic agents (liability in tort)
Agents and data protection
Agents and copyright/patent/sui generis/know how infringement
Intellectual property rights over agent-based software
Agents and computer crime
Agents as self-enforcing regulatory tools
Electronic agents and dispute resolution
Codes of conduct and best practices for agents
Agents for legal practice 
Agents in B2C transactions
agent-based commercial applications
 	 
 
Submissions and Attendance
 Participants should submit a paper (of about 20000 - 25000 characters with footnotes and spaces), describing relevant preliminary or completed work to be presented at the workshop. People interested in making a presentation without submitting a paper are encouraged to submit a
statement of interest, consisting of a single page description of research interests and current work, to be used to encourage discussion and to ensure the maximum contribution and participation. All submissions should include: author's name(s), affiliation, (complete)
mailing address, phone and fax number and e-mail address. Preferably, papers should be submitted in a standard format (txt, pdf, doc, rtf) to cevenini@cirfid.unibo.it or a.oskamp@rechten.vu.nl.

The deadline for receipt of submissions is April 1st 2005. All papers will be reviewed by the programme committee and selected on their originality, timeliness, relevance and clarity. Notification of acceptance will be communicated by May 1st 2005. Final paper due May 25th 2005.
   
The accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of the workshop and on the LEA website http://www.lea-online.net/

Important dates
Submission deadline: April 1st 
Notification of acceptance: April 25th 
Final paper due: May 10th 
 

 Programme committee
 
Anja Oskamp, CLI, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
( A.Oskamp@rechten.vu.nl) (co-chair)
 Claudia Cevenini, CIRSFID, University of Bologna 
( cevenini@cirfid.unibo.it) (co-chair)


Jon Bing, University of Oslo 
Giovanni Sartor, University of Bologna 
Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh 
Sonia Bergamaschi, University of Modena 
Danièle Bourcier, CNRSA, University of Paris 2 
Frances Brazier, Free University of Amsterdam 
Cristiano Castelfranchi, University of Siena 
Jim Cunningham, Imperial College London 
Andrew J.I. Jones, Kings College London 
Daniela Memmo, University of Bologna 
Andrea Omicini, University of Bologna 
Giovanni Pascuzzi, University of Trento 
Jeremy Pitt, Imperial College London 
Burkhard Schäfer, University of Edinburgh 
Marek Sergot, Imperial College London 
Emily Weitzenbock, University of Oslo 



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