The LKIF core legal ontology consists of 15 modules, each of which describes a set of closely related concepts from both legal and commonsense domains. In that sense, the LKIF core ontology is rather a library of ontologies relevant for the legal domain than a monolithic body of definitions. A glossary of the concepts and properties included in these modules can be found here. The online documentation provides a definition of each concept and property in the Manchester OWL syntax (See the co-ode website).

Abstract Concepts

The most abstract concepts are defined in five closely related modules: top, place, mereology, time and spacetime.

• top The LKIF top ontology is largely based on the top-level of LRI-Core but has less ontological commitment in the sense that it imposes less restrictions on subclasses of the top categories.
• place The place module partially implements the theory of relative places (Donnelly, 2005) in OWL DL.
• mereology The mereology module defines mereological concepts such as parts and wholes, and typical mereological relations such as part of, component of, containment, membership etc.
• time The time module provides an OWL DL implementation of the theory of time by Allen (1984).

Basic Concepts

Basic-level concepts are distributed across four modules: process, role, action and expression.

• process The process module extends the LKIF top ontology module with a definition of changes, processes (being causal changes) and physical objects. It introduces a limited set of properties for describing participant roles of processes.
• role The role module defines a typology of roles (epistemic roles, functions, person roles, organisation roles) and the plays-property for relating a role filler to a role.
• action The action module describes the vocabulary for representing actions in general. Actions are processes which are performed by some agent (the actor of the action). This module does not commit itself to a particular theory on thematic roles.
• expression The expression module describes a vocabulary for describing, propositions and propositional attitudes (belief, intention), qualifications, statements and media. It furthermore extends the role module with a number or epistemic roles, and is the basis for the definition of norms.

Legal Concepts

These basic clusters are extended by three modules that form the legal ontology: legal action, legal role and norm.

• legal-action The legal action module extends the action module with a number of legal concepts related to action and agent, such as public acts, public bodies, legal person, natural person etc.
• legal-role The legal role module extends the role module with a small number of legal concepts related to roles, legal professions etc.
• norm The norm module is an extension primarily on the expression module where norms are defined as qualifications. Please refer to Deliverable 1.1 for a more in-depth description of the underlying theory. It furthermore defines a number of legal sources, e.g. legal documents, customary law etc., and a typology of rights and powers, cf. Sartor (2006), Rubino et al. (2006)

Framework Modules

In addition to these legal clusters, two modules are provided that cover the basic vocabulary of two frameworks: modification and rules.

• modification The modification module is both an extension of the time module and the legal action module. The time module is extended with numerous intervals and moments describing the efficacy and being in force of legal documents. The action module is extended with a typology of modifications. These concepts are described in further detail in Deliverable 3.2 of the ESTRELLA project.
• rules The rules & argumentation module defines roles central to argumentation, and describes the vocabulary for LKIF rules as defined in Deliverable 1.1, chapter 5. The module leaves room for further extension to complex argumentation frameworks (AIF, Carneades).

Core and Extended Ontology

Finally, the twelve modules of the abstract, basic and legal level are integrated in the LKIF-Core ontology module. This module does not provide any additional definitions, but functions as an entry-point for users of the ontology library. The two framework modules are accessible through the LKIF Extended ontology module. This module imports the LKIF Core module.

Version: 1.1.0

Version: 2016-08-01

The Hedge Fund Regulation Ontology is an operational application of the Financial Regulation Ontology.

Semantic Compliance® is an ontological approach to regulatory reporting and oversight. The ontology defines semantic rules to process regulatory compliance forms. The purpose is operational for:

• Hedge Funds under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission is to fill out Form PF (private fund).
• Regulators to extract Form PF filing data, transform and load it into semantic data structures.

Latest update: The Hedge Fund Ontology will be a package in the Financial Industry Business Data Model (FIB-DM) in Q3, 2019.

The data triples in this ontology instantiate FinRegOnt classes USC_Title, USC_Chapter, USC_Paragraph etc. along with their properties. They are loaded from USC-2015-title12-chapter17, reverse engineered from the original data in Office of the Law Revision Counsel XML file.

Version: 1.0.0

FRO is a foundational part of a Semantic Web approach to regulatory compliance for (alternative) investment funds. FRO is populated with the full text of US laws and regulations for investment management and Bank regulations.

FRO is based on two industry standards:

• FIBO Financial Industry Business Ontology for funds, clients, securities, derivatives, positions, etc.
• LKIF Legal Knowledge Interchange Format for the law, SEC rules, forms, submissions, and responses.

Version: 1.0.0

The Funding, Research Administration and Projects Ontology (FRAPO) is an ontology for describing the administrative information of research projects, e.g., grant applications, funding bodies, project partners, etc.

Version: 2017-09-04

The FIBO vocabulary is distributed using the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). SKOS is a W3C Recommendation that supports the use of knowledge organization systems (KOS) such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, and taxonomies within the framework of the Semantic Web.

The FIBO vocabulary is distributed as a machine-readable file in which the FIBO class hierarchy is rendered as a tree structure of broader and narrower terms. Properties in FIBO appear as properties in the FIBO vocabulary. Logical restrictions relating pairs of FIBO classes are rendered as simple relationships between corresponding concepts in FIBO Vocabulary. The FIBO Vocabulary, therefore, does not reflect the full richness of the FIBO Ontologies and is provided to support knowledge organization applications that do not require the full logic of FIBO.

The FIBO Vocabulary machine-readable files are intended to provide input to a range of tools, usually characterized as Glossary or Vocabulary tools. These tools are generally used to provide further business-facing presentations of the content of these files.

Version: 2020-06-30

FIBO OWL is available in a number of RDF formats. These are available for offline use (i.e., download all of FIBO as a zip), or online use. Each FIBO ontology file is available for “follow your nose” treatment, a general description of which is available here.

FIBO OWL is published in two releases:

• FIBO Production is published at the end of each calendar quarter and has been vetted by SMEs and passed standard industry hygiene tests for OWL.
• FIBO Development is published in real-time as changes are incorporated by the FIBO Community and consists of a draft as well-vetted content.

Version: 2020-06-30