Online Dispute Resolution

Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) is promised to become an important method to settle e-commerce disputes. To reach this statute it needed ten years of fast and sustained development [Tyler, 2003]: starting in 1996 as a hobby, an experimental stage sustained by academics and non-profit organizations during 1997-1998, an entrepreneurial stage from 1999 (the rate of success as business is 75%), and beginning with 2003 there have been a lot of governmental efforts and projects to institutionalize the online dispute resolution process. Initially, it started in the USA, followed by Australia, where even automatic ODR systems are functioning under a legal framework (for distributing the marital property in divorce cases), now Europe gives a sensitive attention to ODR systems.

 The Goal of the Project

The goal of this project is to implement an intelligent software package that handles online disputes in an automated manner. The following are some of the recommendations that can be suggested:

• the framework should be developed according to current practice in law in order to avoid further requests for dispute resolution at higher level;

• whenever possible, automating the existing dispute resolution;

• the legal framework should not only be a mediation space, but it should also increase the level of expertise of the mediator;

• the technology used must increase the trust in the resolution process.

Papers

• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - A Planning-based Approach for Enacting World Wide Argument Web, in 2nd International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing (IDC08), Catania, Italy, September, Studies in Computational Intelligence, pages 137-146, Springer, 2008.
• A. Groza - Q-learn Argumentation Schemes for Car Sales Dialogues in  the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP08), 257-260, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, August, 2008.
  
• A. Groza - Designing Electronic Markets for Defeasible-based Contractual Agents,  European  Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI), Hamburg, Germany, August, 2008.
  
• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - Contextual Extension with Concept Maps in the Argument Interchange Format Ontology, Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems (ArgMAS), Estoril, Portugal, May, 2008.
• A. Groza - A Computational Model for World Wide Argument Web, 13th Estonian Winter School in Computer Science (EWSCS08), Palmse, Estonia, 2008.
• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - Structured Argumentation in a Mediator for Online Dispute Resolution, In M. Boldoni, T. Son, B. Riemsdijk, M. Winikoff (eds.) Declarative Agents, Languages and Technologies V, Selected, Revised and Invited Papers LNAI 4897, pages 193-200, Springer, 2007.
• A. Letia, A. Groza - Planning with Argumentation Shemes in Online Dispute Resolution, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computer, Communication and Processing, (ICCP07), Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September, 2007.
• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - Exploiting Rough Argumentation in an Online Dispute Resolution Mediator, International Conference on Rough Sets and Emerging Intelligent Systems Paradigms (RSEISP07), Warsaw, Poland, June, 2007, LNAI 4585, Springer, 2007, 697-706 (abstract).
• A. Groza -  Towards Mediation with Extended Temporal  Defeasible Logic,  Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence Summer School (ACAI  07), Leuven, Belgium, 2007.
  
• I. A. Letia, A. Marginean, A. Groza - Z-Based Agents for Service Oriented Computing, In: J Huang, R Kowalczyk, Z Maamar, D Martin, I Mueller, S Stoutenburg, K Sycara (eds), Service-Oriented Computing: Agents, Semantics, and Engineering, LNCS 4504, Springer, 2007, 160-174.
• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - An argumentative System for Online Dispute Resolution, CSCS-16, Bucuresti, Romania, May, 2007.
• I. A. Letia, A. Groza - Structured Argumentation in a Mediator for Online Dispute Resolution, DALT2007, Honolulu, USA, May, 2007 (pdf).

Software

Temporal Defeasible  Logic (TeDeLo)

Download: tdl-0.1.2.tar.gz
Requires: LISA, Allegro LISP (for GUI)

Designing Electronic Markets for Contractual Agents (DEMCA)

Download: demca-0.8.tgz

Tested on RedHat 9.0:

Requires:

- gcl 2.6.5

- emacs 21.2.1

- acrobat reader

- TCL/TK

- R 2.0.0

Arguments in Fuzzy Description Logic