Abstract-The Digital Ecosystem (DES) paradigm and consequently Digital Business Ecosystems (DBE) are powerful emerging inter-company cooperative structures. One of the main advantages of an ecosystem is the enabling of alliances among companies with complementary or even competitive competences in order to be able to provide complex offerings beyond the capabilities of a single company. The process of negotiation and contracting of complex services that can be provided in a cooperative manner by member companies of the ecosystem is an essential binding element among them. The intention of this paper is to explain how the Open Negotiation Environment (ONE) will extend DES research providing sophisticated negotiations processes and supporting tools, enriched by learning and optimisation capabilities, that will allow an organisation to dynamically package and compose complex services by negotiating alliances.

Abstract-The aim of this paper is to discuss the legal and technical issues of creating legally binding contracts in a digital ecosystem and to present the solution created for the DBE (Digital Business Ecosystem) project[1]. We investigate the legal implications of electronic contracts and digital signatures, and also take a brief look at the types of clauses that make up a contract. The DBE contract model for creating contracts and contract templates is presented, along with the tools created for editing these contracts as part of the DBE project.

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