INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC INTER-SYSTEMIC

CONTRACTING - ISSUES ON CONSENT AND CONTRACT

FORMATION

Francisco A C P Andrade

Escola de Direito – Universidade do Minho

Campus de Gualtar, 4710-553 Braga

José Neves

Departamento de Informática – Universidade do Minho

Campus de Gualtar, 4710-553 Braga

Keywords: electronic, contracting, consent, legal, person

Abstract: Electronic con

tracting as an object of legal studies is getting more and more complex. Computers are

currently being used not only as a way of searching and processing information, but also as communication

tools, as automatic operators and already as a way of developing and accessing new forms of intelligent

behaviour through the use of intelligent devices. New ways of electronic contracting have appeared each

one with different specifications and ways of operating. The Brazilian legal doctrine has established a way

of classifying electronic contracts according to the specific technical way of accomplishing each type of

electronic communicating and contracting. For each category, there must be a different analysis relating to

the main issue of the formation of contracts – mainly concerning the declaration of will, the expression of

intent, the question of knowing whether a contract should be considered to be formed or completed. This

issue is particularly problematic as far as Intelligent Electronic Inter-systemic contracting is concerned. The

notions of digital signature and Interchange-Agreements may not be sufficient to grant validity to contracts

formed not just through the machines, but indeed by the machines. So, it must be analyzed at least two main

possibilities of considering the issue of the expression of consent in inter-systemic intelligent transactions:

the possibility of considering the electronic devices as mere machines or tools, or the most daring possibility

of considering the electronic devices as “legal persons”.

1 INTRODUCTION

Electronic contracting as an object of legal studies is

getting more and more complex. Computers are

currently being used not only as a way of searching

and processing information, but also as

communication tools, as automatic operators and

already as a way of developing and accessing new

forms of autonomous intelligent behaviour through

the use of complex intelligent devices. “Computer

systems are now emerging that can operate not just

automatically but autonomously”

All this, featuring

new ways of electronic contracting, each one with its

different specifications and ways of operating,

forcing us to think about the legal effects concerning

each new way of contracting in order to adapt what

we might have considered once as well established

legal principles to the new forms of declaring the

contractual will in electronic environments. One of

the main issues will certainly be the one related to

the formation of contracts – mainly concerning the

above mentioned declaration of will, and

consequently the question of knowing whether a

contract should be considered to be formed or

completed. All these questions could be analysed

using a classification of electronic ways of

contracting, according to the specific way each one

operates, in order to get, whenever possible, similar

answers to similar situations.

403

A C P Andrade F. and Neves J. (2004).

INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC INTER-SYSTEMIC CONTRACTING - ISSUES ON CONSENT AND CONTRACT FORMATION.

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 403-410

DOI: 10.5220/0002621404030410

 SciTePress

2 ELECTRONIC CONTRACTS

CLASSIFICATION

The Brazilian legal doctrine has established a way of

classifying electronic contracts, according to the

specific technical way of accomplishing each type of

electronic communicating and contracting

distinguishing the possibilities of the parties

interacting through computer devices – computers

as mere communication means --, interacting with

computer devices and electronic systems, and also,

as a third possibility, the one of the parties

contracting without interacting at all, leaving all

the work to informatics and electronic systems

which, in an automatic – and sometimes maybe

autonomous way – according to software developed

and put in use on behalf of the contracting parties,

produce a sort of “machine only interaction”. This

leading to the following classification of electronic

contracts:

1 – Interpersonal electronic contracting:

Computer is used as a mere communication tool. It

only transmits and receives the messages processed

by the parties themselves. However, in this group we

can consider two different types – “Simultaneous

interpersonal electronic contracting”, allowing

contract celebration in real time as if the parties were

in the presence of each other ( like the popular

“Chat” but also “video-conference”), and “ Non

simultaneous interpersonal contracting”, when the

declarations of will usually are neither immediate

nor consecutive

( as in electronic mail, but also in

mobile phone written messages).

2 – Interactive electronic contracting: within

this group of electronic contracts we have not a

direct and immediate communication between the

parties. The interaction is effected between a party

and an informatics system of a party that may not

even be aware that the system had been activated, as

it usually happens when someone contracts through

a World Wide Web site

. This way of contracting

could be defined as a “semi-automatic interactive

electronic contract” as there is a natural person

interacting with a computer system that will

normally be previously programmed to

automatically “declare” the will of its owner. Yet,

also in this group we can already foresee a

development of a slightly different way of

interacting, through the communication of a natural

person with an “intelligent device” capable of

autonomous acting, of learning from experience, of

modifying the instructions of its programs, of taking

decisions, of actively participating “in the trading

process”

, all this without any human intervention

on one of the sides in the communication process.

This kind of contracting could thus configure a new

sub-type of this group that we could now call

“electronic interactive contracting with

intelligent system”.

3 – Inter-systemic electronic contracting: this

is the most peculiar way of electronic contracting.

The party’s informatics systems not only are

interconnected but automatically interact without

any human intervention! Natural persons limit their

intervention to the preparing of the computational

systems for communicating and operating

. From

that moment on, the machines will act on their own,

concluding contracts on behalf of the parties. Again

in this group, we can include two important

contracting sub-groups: “automatic inter-systemic

electronic contracting” as the informatics systems

on their own execute in an automatic way the

instructions incorporated in its respective programs

by the programmers – it’s the already classical case

of contracting through EDI-Electronic Data

Interchange; and “intelligent inter-systemic

electronic contracting”, for situations of

contracting through the only intervention and

interaction of autonomous informatics intelligent

systems, capable of acting, learning, modifying

instructions and taking decisions

3 CONTRACTUAL ISSUES

Of course, inter-systemic electronic contracting is in

itself a quite challenging way of contracting, in the

sense that traditional legal principles have some

difficulty to deal with the fact of computers

contracting on their own. Will these contracts still be

legally valid? Can computers express and declare an

intention of will? Who will be the subjects of the

rights and duties arising from these contracts?

Should a contract under these circumstances be

considered perfectly celebrated and thus binding the

parties? Which parties ?

Actually, to speak about contracts there must be

two or more declarations of will, containing a

consensual agreement, consisting of an offer and of

an acceptance. The essential elements of a contract

under Portuguese law are:

 the capacity (and legitimacy) of the

contracting parties

 the declaration (of will) as consent given by

the parties -- “The declaration of will, as a way of

exteriorization of the will, internal element, is

designed to bring to the other party’s knowledge the

intention of reaching a certain juridical effect”

 the object of the contract must be licit.

One of the main issues relating to the inter-

systemic contracts concerns the obvious fact that

computers totally lack legal personality – under

ICEIS 2004 - SOFTWARE AGENTS AND INTERNET COMPUTING

404

Portuguese law, as well as under most of the western

legal systems, personality is an attribute of natural

persons (art. 66 of Civil Code ) and legal persons –

corporate bodies (art. 157º of Civil Code ). And

only those who have personality can have capacity,

which means the possibility of being subjects of

rights or obligations (art. 67 Civil Code), and thus

get contractually engaged. Anyway, according to

Portuguese law (Civil Code art. 217º) a contract may

be celebrated by any means

, so it is not difficult to

accept the validity of electronically concluded

contracts, at least in what concerns interpersonal

electronic contracting and, to some extent, also for

interactive electronic contracting, as in these

contractual types we can still think that normally we

will have a minimum degree of human involvement

– either direct on both sides, or at least by means of

interaction of a natural person with a predisposed,

pre-programmed device presenting the will of the

other party, just as it happens in “adherence

contracts”.

But, as we have referred above, inter-systemic

contracting can be distinguished from other means

of contracting by the degree of human involvement

in the process of contract formation. In every

conventional means of contracting, through

conventional letters, fax, telex (and even in not so

conventional ones, as electronic mail), the human

intervention always appears at the beginning of

every transaction..

However, in inter-systemic

contractual relations the whole process of

communication and contracting is “between

applications” or “between agents” without any

human intervention

. As Tom Allen and Robin

Widdison put it

, it is even “likely that human

traders will have no direct knowledge of, or contact

with, many of their trading partners”, the process of

contracting being totally generated, processed and

controlled by the computers themselves: the

“declarations” are created in a computer’s

application (sender) and automatically sent, and

received by another computer’s application

(receiver). It is no longer essential for a person to sit

in front of the screen to create or receive the

message; the machine will do it by itself! However,

it is clear that the computer can not be the source of

contractual obligations – it obviously lacks legal

capacity! –; it just operates, automatically, following

the decisions taken by persons with capacity to

determine the range of action and the legal effects of

the operation. So, is there still a manifestation of an

expression of will? - considering just the

communication between applications, could lead us

to the absurd of denying any legal value to such

transactions, because contracts can only be

concluded by human beings (even corporate bodies

must be represented by human individuals).

But

now (human) users may well no longer be aware of

the number of transactions, the content of such

transactions or the time (or place) when (or where)

the contracts take effect. As Jean François-Lerouge

refers: “contracts can thus be formed without the

parties who use them having any knowledge of their

existence and terms.”

Are these transactions still

valid? The question is, is there still an authentic

exchange of consents when the transactional

messages are created, transmitted and processed by

computer applications? Must individual will be

identifiable for each contractual transaction

(purchase order, acceptance, etc.), or is it sufficient

that there is a manifestation of will when the system

is initialized? Even if we could consider that true

manifestations of will occur, at least the automation

of the whole process accomplishes a split between

the moment of the free declaration of will of the

parties – whenever it does exist! -- and the moment

when significant parts of the declarative process

(such as the offer and acceptance) take place, which

rises several questions with regard to the validity of

such contracts.

4 EXPRESSION OF WILL AND

CONSENT IN INTERSYSTEMIC

CONTRACTING

As far as automatic inter-systemic electronic

contracting is concerned, there are two main ways of

facing the problem of consent:

--the requirement of an expression of will for

each message (related to the question of the

electronic or digital signature

, as a “method of

authenticating the message while permitting the

sender and the recipient to store it on their own

computers”

); however, these transactions require a

full automated process, which means that it would

be completely useless if it was required a personally

digitised digital signature for each message -- this

obstacle would be overcome if the involved

applications get configured to proceed, in an

automatic way, to the encrypting and decrypting of

the messages, using the respective “private key” and

“public key” of the sender. This procedure could not

be problematic in a bilateral relation, but could also

be used in multilateral EDI with a huge number of

parties involved, provided there was an assurance of

the necessary secrecy of the “private keys”.

--a single expression of will displayed when the

system is set up or initialized (related to the need of

an Interchange Agreement)

-- (“such an agreement

is justified for reasons of both technical and legal

security. The parties need to agree on a message

INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC INTER-SYSTEMIC CONTRACTING - ISSUES ON CONSENT AND CONTRACT

FORMATION

405

standard and set of rules which will govern the

interchange of trade data. These rules will therefore

create a degree of legal certainty, as well as

enhancing enforceability, and since both parties are

required to clarify such details in advance, the

likelihood of disputes is reduced”

). “The parties

previously agree on a defined communication

protocol and on its installation, and the

interconnection of the systems by itself already

reveals the full acceptance of the contents and

effects of the legal transactions to be concluded by

that mean, sparing human intervention in each

transaction, letting such intervention take place only

in the moment of preparing computational systems

for communication”

). Thus being, the will of the

parties to get bind through automatic operations, can

be revealed through a previous contract, before the

initialization of the system. A binding contract --

usually celebrated by traditional means, by express

written declarations between the parties--that we

could therefore call “Interchange Agreement”

Interchange agreements can be bilateral or

multilateral, and in this case, they can bind a

multitude of different kinds of users or only users in

a defined sector of activity; in only one national state

or in different national states. Regardless of its wider

or narrower range of application, an interchange

agreement binds the parties; in it, they confirm their

intention of automatically communicating and

contracting; after signing the interchange agreement,

the parties can not claim ignorance of the prescribed

rules of behaviour or of the effects of automatic

contracting. The interchange agreement is the true

manifestation of will of the parties, thus becoming

the real source of the binding force of automatic

inter-systemic electronic contracts. From the

moment of the acceptation by the parties of the

“Interchange Agreement” (acceptation usually

expressly manifested and even in written form – in

paper or electronically), the parties get legally bound

to accept the production of all and every legal effects

resulting from the automatic activity of their

interconnected informatics applications. And it can

also be said that for each electronic contract this way

celebrated there will be two “declarations of will”

expressly exteriorized by the machines – which

obviously lack legal personality and legal capacity –

that must be understood as a tacit manifestation of

the will of the parties, as resulting from an “indirect

manifestation of will based in a conclusive

behaviour of the declarer

”. The behaviour of the

parties, keeping the automatic electronic system of

data interchange functioning – especially if this

functioning of the system follows and derives from

an Interchange Agreement – is totally conclusive

about the will of the parties of contracting and

getting legally engaged by that mean.

().

Yet, as far as Intelligent Electronic Inter-

systemic Contracting is concerned we must keep in

mind that the used devices can act in such an

autonomous way that it may have severe

implications in the process of contract formation as

we know it. Because intelligent artefacts will not

only act according to its in-built knowledge and

rules

but they also will be able to learn from

experience, modify its own behaviour, according to

cognitive, reactive and pro-active processes quite

similar to human acting

. So, as Emily

Weitzenboeck puts it, “agreements will therefore no

longer be generated through machines but by them,

without any intervention or supervision of an

individual”

. In this way, it may be difficult to

consider the conclusion of contracts in the same way

as we do when we have in mind other ways of

electronic contracting: we cannot speak anymore of

a consent expressed through the electronic devices

(interpersonal electronic devices or interactive

electronic devices) neither of a “programmed

consent”

(previously programmed) as it happens

with automatic inter-systemic contracting based

upon Interchange Agreements. Actually, in

automatic transactions, as Allen and Widdison refer

“the computer acts upon pre-programmed

instructions which can only be altered by the human

trader. For example, the computer could be

programmed to accept any offer to buy widgets at or

above a certain price, but not to modify the price.

Here we could argue that the computer’s stored

program embodies the trader’s intentions”.

“However, they could not do the same with

agreements generated by an autonomous

computer… an autonomous computer is capable of

altering its stored program and developing new

instructions in response to information it acquires in

the course of trading. Since the program changes

overtime, without any human intervention, it would

be very difficult to characterize it as the embodiment

or expression of human intention”.

This leads us

to an imperious need of analysing the question of

expression of consent in inter-systemic intelligent

transactions in a different way. And two main

possibilities have been analyzed: the possibility of

considering the electronic devices as mere machines

or tools, used by its owner and the daring possibility

of considering the electronic device as a legal

person. The first perspective would be simpler to

adopt and it seems in accordance with legislation

already enacted in the United States and Canada: US

Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) and

Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act

(UCITA) and Canada’s Uniform Electronic

Commerce Act, which already expressly recognize

that a contract may be formed by the Interaction of

electronic agents. The second possibility, although

ICEIS 2004 - SOFTWARE AGENTS AND INTERNET COMPUTING

406

presenting some practical difficulties, may appear

quite fascinating and must be considered. A third

possibility that has been also frequently mentioned is

the application of the rules of agency to electronic

transactions – “when a principal uses a computer in

the same manner that it uses a human agent, then the

law should treat the computer in the same manner

that it treats the human agent”

. However, we will

not develop this idea because it seems obvious that

the application of the “agency paradigm” would only

be possible if we could first solve the issue of legal

personhood for the electronic agents. Indeed, it

would be difficult to consider a principal-agent

relationship without the consent of both parties. And

“In a principal-computer agent relationship, the

concept of the computer consenting is absurd”

. So

the agency paradigm does not solve our problems.

We must go back to the previously enounced

possibilities:

5 COMPUTER INTELLIGENT

AGENT AS MACHINE OR TOOL

One of the possible solutions for the question of

consent would then be to consider the whole

transaction process as indeed performed by a human.

It would be like establishing a legal presumption --

Allen and Widdison call it a “legal fiction”!

-- that

“all transactions entered into by the computer would

be treated as transactions entered into by the human

trader”, thus putting the intention and the whole risk

for the transactions “on the person best able to

control them – those who program and control the

computer”

. This fiction -- based in a presumption

that a person assents to a contract, even though he

may not be aware that a contract was celebrated, as

he may also be totally unaware of the precise terms

of the contract

-- would perfectly comply, for

instance, with the USA’s UCITA regime (and

intention), as it was pointed out by its creators,

according to Jean-François Lerouge: “if a party

create a situation in which an electronic agent is to

act on his behalf, then a party is bound by the

actions of the “agents” “

. In this regard,

Weitzenboeck speaks of attribution: “the operations

of an intelligent agent are attributed to the human

who uses the agent”

. That is to say that this theory

recognizing that the only valid and relevant consent

must be the one of the person on whose behalf the

agent acts

, a connection must thus be established

between the action (non-human) and the intention

(human), in a similar way to what we had referred

on the conclusive behaviour of the declarer for

automatic inter-systemic electronic transactions: “

by initiating the electronic agent, the user is deemed

to have accepted that contracts concluded by the

agent will be binding on such user. The assent of the

electronic agent will be inferred to be the assent of

the (human) user of the agent”

. The acceptance of

this theory would have an obvious impact – the risk

of transactions would entirely be put “on the persons

who program, control or otherwise use an electronic

agent”

and these would eventually be assigned a

sort of liability regime similar to the one relating to

the use of cars or machines by the owner. “A party

may be liable for a damage caused by an object”

It is a well known principle of Civil Law’s liability

regime that “a person to whose sphere machines can

be assigned to is supposed to be liable for them.

Thus, the one shall bear the risk that has the right

and ability to control the machine and receives a

(financial) benefit from its use”

. And though the

damages to be caused by agents would most surely

not be of a physical order, but only financial, the

truth is that the financial loss could become quite

burdening. Having this in mind, can we make such

an assertion of intention and liability when we are

not speaking of machines that one can control, but of

most sophisticated engines whose behaviour can not

be totally predicted? Wouldn’t it be a terrible

burden to put on programmers and users – who

surely would not be “in such a condition to

anticipate the contractual behaviour of the agent in

all possible circumstances” and so would not be in

position of “wanting” each and every “contract

which the agent will conclude” ?

Although this theory of considering electronic

agents as a mere machine or tool used by an owner

is the most well accepted by legal authors, and

besides it was contemplated by the only legislation

enacted until now – in the US and in Canada -- the

truth is that some authors have been looking for

some other possible solutions, and it seems not

totally absurd to think about the possibility of

recognizing, in the future, the “electronic agents” as

legal persons.

6 ELECTRONIC AGENTS AS

LEGAL PERSONS

Law has long been recognizing that besides natural

persons, the ones who physically are born and die,

other entities socially engaged within the

community, must also be subject of rights and

obligations. Portuguese law, for instance, recognizes

what it calls “Collective Persons” as having legal

personality and capacity for every right and

obligation needed or convenient to the prosecution

of its social goals (Portuguese Civil Code, article

160º). And although these corporate bodies are

INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC INTER-SYSTEMIC CONTRACTING - ISSUES ON CONSENT AND CONTRACT

FORMATION

407

constituted by human affiliates, partners or

members, law recognizes that the “Collective

Persons” constitute a totally different and

autonomous person – a person who acts on his own,

and for that reason its own acts are accorded a “legal

meaning within the legal system”

. If an action of

the entity causes damages, the claimers can sue the

“entity” and not necessarily its members. But can

we foresee the attribution of such a regime to

“electronic agents” ? That attribution would have at

least two clear advantages: First, by the recognition

of an autonomous consent – which is not a fiction at

all -- it would solve the question of consent and of

the validity of contracts concluded by electronic

agents without affecting too much the legal theories

about contractual freedom, consent and conclusion

of contracts

. Secondly, and also quite important, it

would “reassure the owners-users of agents”,

because, by considering the eventual “agents”

liability, it could at least limit their own (human)

responsibility for the “agents” behaviour

. This

solution might look rather convenient in all aspects.

But, nevertheless, its adoption will not be without

difficulties. One of the difficulties relates to the

identification of the agents? We would need

technical answers to some questions. What

constitutes the agent? The hardware? The software?

Both? And “what if the hardware and software are

dispersed over several sites and maintained by

different individuals?”

. Besides that, agents may

have the capability of dividing themselves “into the

modules they include” or multiplying themselves

“into undistinguished copies”

. That would

inevitably put a tremendous problem relating to the

domicile of the electronic agent. In order to be a

legal person, the agent must have a residence or

domicile. But mobile agents “do not have an

established physical location”

Another relevant question concerning the legal

personhood of electronic agents is that of its

“patrimonial duties”. In order to exist, a legal

person must have, or at least be capable of having a

patrimony. But does it make any sense to attribute a

patrimony to an electronic device? Can we imagine

a situation of these electronic devices having

“patrimonial rights and also be subject to liability for

negligent acts or omissions, just as natural persons

would”?

7 CONCLUSION

Of course these difficulties are possible to

overcome. But laws would have to be prepared and

approved accordingly. A non natural legal person

surely must be object of a constitution / declaration

act and eventually of registration

. Through that

registration procedure it could be attributed a

physical location to the agent, and also the creators /

owners of the device should be legally compelled to

make a banking deposit, functioning as sort of an

agents patrimony, “a capital or a certain amount of

assets”

of the new legal person, in order to ensure

that it could fulfil its financial obligations. As

Giovanni Sartor refers

“this fund would represent a

warranty for the counterparties, who would need to

know its amount before finalising a contract with the

agent”. A minimum amount of “capital” should be

established, similarly to what happens to commercial

corporations. Besides that, maybe the law should

establish also a compulsory Insurance regime for

Intelligent Agent’s activities.

Although exciting all this may seem, the truth is

that we are not yet there. For the moment it is not

possible to consider the “electronic agents” as legal

persons. And yet, they exist and become more and

more available for autonomous work in the

electronic trading. Should we accept the fiction of

considering them as mere tools the humans are

using, even knowing humans may not be able to

control them? Or is there another solution? For the

moment, and considering that European jurisdictions

have not yet decided what regime to adopt

concerning electronic agents, I would just like to

finish with the optimistic suggestion of Giovanni

Sartor:

“An easier and less risky way for the agent to

make contracts… and to limit the liability of the user

(at least, to some extent) is available. This consists

in creating companies for on-line trading, which

would use agents in doing their business. Such

agents would act in the name of a company, their

will would count as the will of the company, their

legally relevant location would be the company’s

domicile, creditors could sue the company for

obligations contracted by those agents. The

counterparties of an agent could then be warranted

by the capital of the company and by the legal

remedies available towards defaulting commercial

companies”.

REFERENCES

Allen, Tom and Widdison, Robin “Can Computer

Make Contracts?”, page 27.

Barbagalo, Erica Brandini “Contratos Eletrônicos”,

pages 48-58.

Barbagalo, Erica op. cited, pages 53 and 54.

Barbagalo, Erica op. cited page 55 and 56.

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 26.

ICEIS 2004 - SOFTWARE AGENTS AND INTERNET COMPUTING

408

Barbagalo, Erica op. cited, pages 51-52 and also 87.

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited

Pinto, Carlos Alberto da Mota “Teoria Geral do

Direito Civil”, page 263 and Andrade, Manuel

Domingues de “Teoria Geral da Relação Jurídica”,

vol. II page 34.

Barbagalo, Erica op. Cited, page 60

Lima, Fernando Andrade Pires de and Varela, João de

Matos Antunes “Código Civil Anotado”, volume 1

Interpersonal electronic contracting is characterized

by a personal / direct intervention of the parties,

although eventually declaring both their will by means

of electronic communication. But the parties still

totally control the process of contract formation. In

interactive electronic contracting, one of the parties

still declares or acts in a way to let it clear as to the

real sense of his will. Although one of the parties is

not actually “present” at the moment the contract is

performed, it is usually intended that that party acts

through the so called “proposal to the public” – a firm

and clear proposal having all the required essential

contractual elements and clauses: for instance, the

proposals of contracts through Web pages, the web

visitor having nothing else to do than to accept or

reject the proposal. We may be facing the so-called

“adherence contracts”. The contractual clauses are pre-

disposed by one of the parties and the other party, after

accessing the web site and reading the terms of the

contract is free to accept or not the offered contract.

Cfr. Almeida, Carlos Ferreira de “Contratos”, page

62, Gentili, Aurelio “L’inefficacia del contratto

telematico”,pág. 753 and Thoumyre, Lionel

“L’échange des consentements dans ls commerce

électronique”

Elias, Lieve and Gerard, Jacques “Formation of the

contract by Electronic Data Interchange”, pages 2-3.

Op. cited, page 28.

In France, according to Alain Bensoussan, such

contracts “are legally valid provided that they can be

kept under the control of human beings”. Cfr..

Bensoussan, Alain “L’échange de donées informatisé

et le droit”, page 67.

Lerouge, Jean-François “The use of electronic agents

questioned under contractual law. Suggested solutions

on a European and American level”, page 5

Reed, Chris “Computer Law”, page 268.

idem.

in “EDI and the Law: an introduction” Ian Walden,

page 35

idem

Barbagalo, Erica op. cited, page 51.

Barbagalo, Erica idem, page 51; Viterbo Matos

Santolim in “Formação e eficácia probatória dos

contratos por computador”, referred by Erica Brandini

Barbagalo

Hörster, Heinrich Ewald “A parte geral do Código

Civil Português – Teoria Geral do Direito Civil”

It must also be referred that, even in the case that the

parties don’t formalize a written Interchange

Agreement, but anyway, they actually install,

interconnect and initialize the informatics applications

for the automatic interchange of messages, they will

also get legally bound by the contracts deriving of the

activity of such machines, considering the above said

about tacit declarations and conclusive behaviours

Weitzenboeck, Emily “Electronic Agents and the

formation of contracts”, page 5

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 27 and

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 2

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 6

Felliu, Silvia “Intelligent Agents and Consumer

Protection”, note 17

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, pages 48 and

Fischer, John “Computers as Agents: a proposed

approach to revised U.C.C. Article 2” , page 557

Lerouge, Jean-François op. cited,pages 8 and 9, and

Fischer, John ,op. cited, page 569

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 43

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, pages 46 and

Lerouge, Jean-François ,op. cited, page 31

Lerouge, Jean-François op. cited, page 27

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 10

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 17

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 10

Lerouge, Jean-François op.cited, page 28

Haentjens, Oliver van “Shopping agents and their

legal implications regarding Austrian law”, point 4.2

Sartor, Giovanni “Agents in Cyberlaw”, point 3

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 38

in the same sense cfr. Felliu, Silvia op. cited, note 17

cfr. Sartor, Giovanni op. cited point 4

Allen, Tom / Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 42

Sartor, Giovanni op. cited, point 4

Sartor, Giovanni op.cited, point 4

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 9

Weitzenboeck, Emily op. cited, page 9 and Allen,

Tom/ Widdison, Robin op. cited, page 42

Lerouge, Jean-François op. cited, page 11

Sartor, Giovanni op. cited, point 4

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