diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 924a437..abef3f8 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -47,6 +47,10 @@ Extracted and stabilized from the concept draft under `workplans/TREV-WP-0003-no [`specs/TargetRevenueCommercialUseAgreement-V1C1.md`](specs/TargetRevenueCommercialUseAgreement-V1C1.md) is the companion Commercial Use Agreement template the License refers to but does not itself set terms for — same preliminary-candidate status, but **less** mature than the License: it had no dedicated prior-art research pass, and its Section 13 (Indemnification) is deliberately left unwritten rather than guessed. +## Enforcement Network concept + +[`specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md`](specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md) is a new, separate concept (2026-07-29): independent, locally-licensed Enforcement Partners pursue unauthorized Commercial Use in their home jurisdiction for a share of Recovery, so License §3 enforcement scales without the Licensor litigating everywhere directly. **The central open risk is that lawyer contingency fees are not legal everywhere** — Germany notably restricts them — so the concept requires a jurisdiction-conditional Litigation Funder/Local Counsel structure, not a single global fee mechanism. Backed by `workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md`; four of ten research tasks are done (Germany/EU, US, UK, mechanism design — see `history/260729-TREN-*.md`), confirming the UK's 50% Damages-Based Agreement cap validates the originally-proposed Contingency Share exactly, while Germany likely requires the split-role structure. + ## Repository layout | Path | Role | @@ -71,6 +75,7 @@ Extracted and stabilized from the concept draft under `workplans/TREV-WP-0003-no | [TREV-WP-0002](workplans/TREV-WP-0002-trust-service-foundation.md) | Schemas, pure Outstanding Target fold, golden fixture — **finished** | | [TREV-WP-0003](workplans/TREV-WP-0003-normative-core-extraction.md) | Extract stable normative core docs — T01–T05 done, T06 human review open | | [TREV-WP-0004](workplans/TREV-WP-0004-global-jurisdiction-research.md) | Global jurisdictional research backing the License/CUA candidates (Germany/EU, US, UK, Argentina, India, China, Africa, Asia-Pacific, choice-of-law) — planned, not started | +| [TREV-WP-0005](workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md) | Enforcement Network legal feasibility research (contingency-fee availability per jurisdiction) — 4 of 10 tasks done | Hub index: [`WORK-RECORDS.md`](WORK-RECORDS.md) · brief: [`.custodian-brief.md`](.custodian-brief.md) diff --git a/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..935d7c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +# TREN Jurisdiction Research: Germany and EU-Wide + +**Document status:** Research artifact, Stage 0 (`workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md` T01) +**Not legal advice.** Findings drawn from web research (searched 2026-07-29); verify against primary statutory text and current case law before drafting. + +--- + +## 1. Germany: RVG §4a is a narrow exception, not a general permission + +Germany has permitted contingency fees (*Erfolgshonorar*) since 2008, but **only** under §4a of the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz (RVG), and only in one of three narrow circumstances: + +1. the claim is a monetary claim of no more than €2,000; +2. the fee is for a collection service (debt collection), in or out of court; or +3. the client would otherwise reasonably be deterred from pursuing the claim at all for economic reasons (and the availability of legal aid/court-cost assistance is disregarded when assessing this). + +Critically, for the general ("otherwise deterred") ground, German law does **not** permit a pure percentage-of-recovery fee even then: the agreement must provide that the client pays no fee, or a reduced fee, if the case is lost, in exchange for an "appropriate surcharge" on the statutory fee if the case is won — a structured uplift on the statutory fee schedule, not an open percentage of Recovery. There are also formal and disclosure requirements attached to any such agreement. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** a straightforward "Enforcement Partner gets 50% of Recovery" arrangement, engaged as a normal contingent-fee retainer with a German *Rechtsanwalt*, almost certainly does not fit any of §4a's three narrow gates as drafted in `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §5.5–§5.6. Unauthorized Commercial Use of a Milestone Release is not a debt-collection claim, is very unlikely to be ≤€2,000 for any Phase with a meaningful Initial Target, and the "client would otherwise be deterred" ground would require the Licensor itself to show it could not otherwise afford to litigate — an awkward fit for a Licensor operating a whole monetization framework. **Germany is therefore, on these facts, a jurisdiction where the concept doc's Litigation Funder / Local Counsel split (§8) is likely necessary, not optional**, since a German lawyer being paid a straight Contingency Share directly is not evidently compliant with §4a. + +## 2. France: pactum de quota litis is prohibited, but a fixed-fee-plus-result-fee structure is not + +Article 10 of the French law of 1971 governing the legal profession prohibits a fee arrangement "solely based on the judicial result" (*pactum de quota litis*) — such an agreement is void. + +However, French practice permits a **two-part structure**: a fixed fee (*honoraire fixe*) that must be non-trivial, plus an additional result-based fee (*honoraire de résultat*) contingent on the outcome. Case law has struck down arrangements where the fixed component was a token amount relative to the result fee (one cited case: a €120 fixed fee against an €8,040 result fee was held to collapse back into a prohibited *pactum de quota litis*). There is **no statutory cap** on the percentage of the result fee, provided the fixed component is genuine. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** France is structurally similar to the general shape of Germany's exception-3 gate (a fixed-plus-uplift structure rather than a pure percentage), but more permissive in that there is no need to show the client would otherwise be deterred, and no statutory percentage cap — only a "not merely token" requirement on the fixed component. This suggests a **general continental-European pattern worth designing for directly**: the Enforcement Partner Agreement (concept §9) should probably build in a fixed retainer component plus a contingent uplift as the default structure for civil-law jurisdictions with this pattern, rather than treating "fixed-plus-uplift" as a workaround only for edge cases. + +## 3. EU-level litigation funding regulation: proposed, not yet adopted + +The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Responsible Private Funding of Litigation on 13 September 2022 (504–57, with 65 abstentions), annexing a draft directive proposing EU-wide minimum standards for third-party commercial litigation funding (transparency, fairness, proportionality). The European Commission committed to a mapping exercise rather than immediate legislation; that mapping study was published in March 2025 and found that **third-party litigation funding remains largely unregulated at EU level, with significant variation across member states**. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** there is currently no single EU-wide litigation-funding rulebook to design against — the Litigation Funder role (concept §8) must be assessed member-state by member-state for the foreseeable future, not assumed to have one EU-wide answer. This is a live regulatory area; any V1.0 candidate should note the mapping study and monitor for the proposed directive's eventual adoption status rather than treating this section as settled. + +## 4. Summary for the feasibility matrix (T10) + +| Question | Germany | France (2nd EU data point) | +|---|---|---| +| Direct lawyer contingency fee available? | No — only 3 narrow §4a gates, none fitting TREN's likely fact pattern well | No (*pactum de quota litis* prohibited) | +| Structured alternative available? | Yes — reduced/no fee on loss + statutory-fee uplift on win, but only within §4a's 3 gates | Yes — fixed fee + uncapped result fee, provided fixed fee is non-trivial | +| Litigation funding regulatory status | No dedicated German regime found in this pass; subject to general EU mapping finding (unregulated at EU level, member-state variation) | Same | +| Recommended TREN structure | Litigation Funder / Local Counsel split (concept §8), fixed-plus-uplift for Local Counsel's own compensation | Fixed-plus-uplift structure for Local Counsel directly, potentially without needing a separate Funder if fee sized appropriately | + +## 5. Open items for T10 synthesis + +- Whether Germany's §4a gate 3 ("client would otherwise be deterred") could be engineered to apply if the *Enforcement Partner* itself is structured as the economically-deterred party bringing its own claim under an assignment or subrogation theory, rather than the Licensor being the named client — this is a structuring question for specialist German counsel, not resolved here. +- Whether the EU litigation-funding mapping study's member-state-by-member-state findings (published March 2025) contain more granular detail than surfaced in this pass — worth a follow-up fetch of the study itself before V1.0. diff --git a/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1681b22 --- /dev/null +++ b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +# TREN Jurisdiction Research: United Kingdom + +**Document status:** Research artifact, Stage 0 (`workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md` T03) +**Not legal advice.** Findings drawn from web research (searched 2026-07-29); verify against current legislation and the Association of Litigation Funders' current Code of Conduct before drafting. + +--- + +## 1. Damages-Based Agreements: the 50% figure is directly validated, but only for "all other cases" + +The UK's Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2013 cap the maximum percentage of a client's damages a lawyer may recover as a fee at: + +- **25%** for personal injury claims (excluding damages for future care and loss); +- **35%** for employment tribunal cases; +- **50%** for **all other cases**. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** the Licensor's proposed 50% Contingency Share (`specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §5.5) is **exactly** the statutory maximum for a UK Damages-Based Agreement in the "all other cases" category — which an unauthorized-Commercial-Use claim (a commercial/IP matter, not personal injury or employment) would fall into. This is the first jurisdiction in this research pass where the Licensor's original figure is not just plausible but precisely at a real regulatory ceiling, not an arbitrary round number. Any UK Enforcement Partner Agreement should treat 50% as the maximum, not a safe default with headroom — a DBA at exactly 50% will attract the same scrutiny any fee arrangement pushing a statutory cap does, and should be reviewed by UK counsel rather than assumed compliant merely for equaling the cap rather than exceeding it. + +## 2. Conditional Fee Agreements as a second, more flexible structure + +Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs, "no win, no fee") are a separate, older mechanism: the lawyer's normal fee is payable only on success, plus a "success fee" uplift. Success fees are capped (e.g., no more than 100% of basic damages, with a separate 25% cap specifically for personal injury pain-and-suffering/past-loss damages). Unlike a DBA, a CFA's success fee is not itself calculated as a percentage of the client's damages recovered — it is an uplift on the lawyer's own fee. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** the UK offers **two** distinct structures TREN could use — a DBA (percentage-of-Recovery, capped at 50% for this case type) matching the Licensor's original framing directly, or a CFA (fee-plus-uplift, similar in shape to the German/French structured alternatives found in T01) as a fallback if a DBA's specific formal requirements are not met. The Enforcement Partner Agreement outline (T09) should probably default to a DBA structure for UK engagements specifically, since it maps onto the concept doc's existing terminology (Contingency Share as a percentage of Recovery) without modification, unlike Germany or France. + +## 3. Litigation funding: mature, self-regulated, and unencumbered by historical doctrine + +The UK's third-party litigation funding market is well-established. The historical champerty and maintenance doctrines, which once would have barred a stranger from funding another's litigation for a share of the proceeds, have been substantially set aside for commercial litigation funding by modern case law and market practice. The Association of Litigation Funders (ALF) maintains a Code of Conduct that funders can voluntarily join; as of the data point found in this pass (referencing a 2013-era count), only a minority of funders operating in the DBA space had actually signed up to the ALF Code, suggesting the UK funding market's self-regulation is real but not universal — worth checking current ALF membership figures before relying on ALF membership as a quality signal for a UK Litigation Funder in the Enforcement Registry (concept §10). + +**Direct implication for TREN:** the UK is, alongside the US, a jurisdiction where a single-role Enforcement Partner (or an ALF-Code-compliant Litigation Funder paired with counsel, if the parties prefer that structure for risk-sharing reasons unrelated to legal necessity) is workable without the German-style forced structural workaround. + +## 4. Summary for the feasibility matrix (T10) + +| Question | United Kingdom | +|---|---| +| Direct lawyer contingency fee available? | Yes, via a Damages-Based Agreement, capped at 50% for non-PI/non-employment cases | +| Structured alternative available? | Yes — Conditional Fee Agreement (fee-plus-uplift), similar in shape to the German/French pattern | +| Litigation funding regulatory status | Mature, self-regulated market (ALF Code of Conduct); champerty/maintenance largely set aside for commercial funding | +| Recommended TREN structure | DBA at up to 50% — directly matches the Licensor's original proposal and concept doc terminology with no modification needed | + +## 5. Open items for T10 synthesis + +- Confirm current ALF membership figures and Code of Conduct terms before treating ALF membership as a registry admission criterion (concept §10) for UK Enforcement Partners/Funders. +- Confirm the DBA Regulations 2013 have not been amended or superseded since this pass's data point before finalizing 50% as the UK figure. diff --git a/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9933ff --- /dev/null +++ b/history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +# TREN Jurisdiction Research: United States + +**Document status:** Research artifact, Stage 0 (`workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md` T02) +**Not legal advice.** Findings drawn from web research (searched 2026-07-29); verify against current state-bar rules and case law before drafting. + +--- + +## 1. Contingency fees: broadly permitted, but the market has a specific gap for this fact pattern + +US lawyers may generally take a direct percentage-of-recovery contingency fee, subject to state-bar "reasonableness" rules (no fixed federal cap; state variance exists but a straightforward contingency arrangement is routine and well-understood practice). Of every jurisdiction in this research pass, the US is the clearest case where the concept doc's original single-role Enforcement Partner (lawyer paid the Contingency Share directly) is unambiguously workable as a matter of professional-conduct law. + +However, research surfaced a **practical, not legal, gap specific to copyright cases**: contingent-fee copyright attorneys are, in practice, generally uninterested in pursuing a case unless statutory damages and fee-shifting are actually available — which under US copyright law requires **timely copyright registration** before the infringement (or within statutory grace periods). Without that, a plaintiff is limited to actual damages and the infringer's profits, which are harder to prove and often not large enough to justify a contingent engagement. **Direct implication for TREN:** the Enforcement Network's viability in the US is likely conditioned on the Licensor registering copyright in each Milestone Release before enforcement becomes necessary — a proactive, low-cost step the Licensor should build into the Phase lifecycle (e.g., at Phase declaration or Conversion) rather than an afterthought once a violation is found. + +## 2. Statutory damages and the Copyright Claims Board + +US statutory damages for copyright infringement (where registration requirements are met) range from $750–$30,000 per work at the court's discretion, rising to up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement. This creates a strong, quantifiable contingency-fee incentive independent of proving actual harm — directly useful for TREN's Recovery mechanism (concept §5.4) since it gives Enforcement Partners a predictable floor to value a case against, rather than relying entirely on the specific Phase's Development Credit shortfall as the measure of damages. + +The **Copyright Claims Board (CCB)**, a small-claims-style tribunal within the US Copyright Office, is a lower-cost alternative to federal court for claims within its jurisdictional limits, and can award the losing party's reasonable costs and fees if a claim is brought in bad faith (a check against frivolous filings, relevant to concept §10's anti-abuse principles). **Direct implication:** the CCB is a plausible venue for Enforcement Actions against smaller-scale unauthorized Commercial Use where full federal litigation would be disproportionate — worth building into the Enforcement Partner Agreement outline (T09) as a tiered-venue option by case size, rather than assuming every US Enforcement Action means full federal litigation. + +## 3. Litigation funding: regulatory attention is on disclosure, not prohibition + +Unlike Germany or India, the US does not prohibit or narrowly gate contingency arrangements — the live regulatory conversation in the US is about **disclosure** of third-party litigation funding arrangements to courts and opposing parties (a recurring legislative and rulemaking topic in several states and in federal procedural-rule discussions), not about whether funding itself is permissible. The historical champerty and maintenance doctrines that once restricted third parties from funding others' litigation have been substantially eroded in most US states for commercial litigation funding. + +**Direct implication for TREN:** in the US, the Litigation Funder / Local Counsel split (concept §8) is available as an option but is not legally necessary the way it likely is in Germany — a US Enforcement Partner can plausibly be both funder and counsel in one role, exactly as the Licensor's original single-role concept envisioned. Any disclosure obligations that apply to a funding arrangement should be built into the Enforcement Partner Agreement as a compliance checklist item (T09), not treated as a bar to the mechanism. + +## 4. Summary for the feasibility matrix (T10) + +| Question | United States | +|---|---| +| Direct lawyer contingency fee available? | Yes, broadly, subject to state-bar reasonableness rules | +| Structured alternative needed? | No — single-role Enforcement Partner is viable | +| Litigation funding regulatory status | Permitted; live debate is about disclosure requirements, not prohibition | +| Practical precondition for viability | Timely copyright registration of the Milestone Release, to unlock statutory damages and fee-shifting that make contingent engagement attractive | +| Notable venue option | Copyright Claims Board for smaller-scale, lower-cost Enforcement Actions | + +## 5. Open items for T10 synthesis + +- Recommend the Phase lifecycle (or the License/Phase Manifest itself) build in a copyright-registration step per Milestone Release specifically to keep US enforcement economically viable — currently not mentioned anywhere in `specs/PhaseManifestSpecification.md` or the License. +- State-by-state variance in contingency-fee reasonableness rules was not researched in depth in this pass (treated as broadly permissive); flag for deeper research only if a specific state's rules become relevant to an actual Enforcement Action. diff --git a/history/260729-TREN-MechanismDesign.md b/history/260729-TREN-MechanismDesign.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..30d7b71 --- /dev/null +++ b/history/260729-TREN-MechanismDesign.md @@ -0,0 +1,75 @@ +# TREN Mechanism Design: Litigation Funder / Local Counsel Split + +**Document status:** Research artifact, Stage 0 (`workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md` T09) +**Not legal advice.** Design synthesis drawn from `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md`, `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md`, and `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md`. + +--- + +## 1. The core finding driving this design + +Three jurisdictions researched so far split cleanly into two groups: + +- **Single-role viable** (US, UK): a lawyer can be paid a direct percentage of Recovery, at or near the Licensor's proposed 50% figure, without a separate funding entity. +- **Single-role not viable as originally framed** (Germany, and likely France and other continental civil-law jurisdictions by the same pattern): a lawyer generally cannot be paid a direct percentage; the available structures are either narrowly gated (Germany's §4a) or require a genuine fixed-fee component alongside an uncapped result fee (France). + +A mechanism designed only around the US/UK pattern would simply not be usable in Germany — the jurisdiction the Licensor specifically named first. A mechanism designed only around the German pattern would be needlessly complex for jurisdictions where it isn't required. The design below is a **single Enforcement Partner Agreement (EPA) template with jurisdiction-conditional role structure**, not two separate products. + +## 2. Roles + +| Role | Function | Required in | +|---|---|---| +| **Licensor** | Holds the underlying right being enforced (License §3); vets and authorizes each Enforcement Action (concept §3.2, §10); is the ultimate recipient of the Platform Share. | All jurisdictions | +| **Local Counsel** | Locally-licensed lawyer/firm who actually conducts the Enforcement Action under local procedure and professional-conduct rules. | All jurisdictions | +| **Litigation Funder** *(conditional role)* | A non-lawyer party that bears the economic risk of the Enforcement Action and is contractually entitled to some or all of the Contingency Share, paying Local Counsel under a locally-compliant fee structure. | Required where Local Counsel cannot lawfully receive a direct percentage of Recovery (e.g. Germany); optional/absent where Local Counsel can (US, UK) | + +The **Enforcement Partner** term from the concept doc (§5.2) now resolves, per jurisdiction, to either: + +- **(a) Single-role:** Local Counsel is the Enforcement Partner and receives the Contingency Share directly (US default; UK default via DBA), or +- **(b) Split-role:** the Litigation Funder is the Enforcement Partner of record for contracting/payment purposes, and separately retains Local Counsel under a compliant local fee arrangement (Germany default; likely much of continental Europe). + +## 3. Payment flow + +```text +Single-role (e.g. US, UK): + Recovery --> [Contingency Share to Local Counsel] + [Platform Share to Licensor] + +Split-role (e.g. Germany): + Recovery --> [Contingency Share to Litigation Funder] --> [compliant local fee to Local Counsel, + retained profit to Funder] + --> [Platform Share to Licensor] +``` + +In both structures, the **Platform Share is unaffected** — it is always Recovery minus the Contingency Share, regardless of who receives the Contingency Share or how they in turn compensate Local Counsel. This keeps `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §6's Development Credit allocation rule identical across jurisdictions; only the Contingency Share's internal routing varies. + +## 4. Jurisdiction-conditional structure selection (feasibility matrix, partial — T04–T08 still pending) + +| Jurisdiction | Structure | Contingency Share ceiling found | +|---|---|---| +| Germany | Split-role (Litigation Funder + Local Counsel under a §4a-compliant fixed-fee-plus-uplift arrangement, or Local Counsel directly if a §4a gate genuinely applies) | No general percentage cap found; §4a gates are narrow, not percentage-limited | +| France | Likely single-role viable via fixed-fee-plus-uncapped-result-fee, provided the fixed component is genuine (not token) | No statutory cap found | +| United States | Single-role | State-bar reasonableness, no fixed cap found | +| United Kingdom | Single-role via DBA | 50% (statutory cap, "all other cases" category) | +| Argentina, India, China, Africa, Asia-Pacific | Not yet researched (WP-0005 T04–T08) | — | + +**This table is necessarily incomplete** — five jurisdiction/family tasks remain `todo`. Do not treat "single-role" as the default assumption for any jurisdiction not listed above. + +## 5. Enforcement Partner Agreement (EPA) outline + +Building on `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §9's requirement list, with roles now concrete: + +1. **Parties.** Licensor; Local Counsel; Litigation Funder (if the split-role structure applies in this jurisdiction). +2. **Scope.** The specific Alleged Violation(s), jurisdiction, and Phase(s) covered. +3. **Authorization.** A power of attorney or equivalent local instrument from the Licensor to Local Counsel (and, in the split-role structure, confirmation of the Funder's standing to fund without itself practicing law — this is exactly the boundary German and similar rules police, so this clause needs the most jurisdiction-specific care). +4. **Fee/Contingency structure.** Selected per §4's jurisdiction table: single-role percentage, or split-role Funder-percentage-plus-Local-Counsel-compliant-fee. +5. **Conduct standards.** Local Counsel's obligation to pursue the Enforcement Action diligently and report status to the Licensor. +6. **Settlement authority.** Whether Local Counsel/Funder can settle without the Licensor's consent, and how the Contingency Share is calculated if the Licensor settles directly over Local Counsel's objection (flagged as unresolved in concept §11 question 4). +7. **Registry reporting.** What gets reported to the Enforcement Registry (concept §5.7) and when — status changes, not case strategy or privileged material. +8. **Termination.** Either party's ability to withdraw, and treatment of work-in-progress compensation on withdrawal. + +Full legal text is out of scope for this design synthesis — this outline feeds T10's synthesis task, which will produce (but not itself finalize) a fuller draft. + +## 6. What remains open + +- Five jurisdiction/family tasks (Argentina, India, China, Africa, Asia-Pacific — WP-0005 T04–T08) are needed before the feasibility matrix in §4 is complete enough for a real V1.0 recommendation. +- Concept doc open question 5 (foreign-Licensor standing) is directly relevant to clause 3 above and needs jurisdiction-specific answers, not a general one. +- Whether a single global entity can act as "the" Litigation Funder across all split-role jurisdictions, or whether local funding-market presence is required per jurisdiction, was not researched in this pass. diff --git a/specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md b/specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b283b14 --- /dev/null +++ b/specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md @@ -0,0 +1,213 @@ +# Enforcement Network Concept + +**Working name:** Target Revenue Enforcement Network (TREN) +**Document status:** Concept draft — new, 2026-07-29 +**Purpose:** Define the conceptual foundation for a decentralized, contingency-incentivized mechanism by which License §3 (Commercial Use) violations are pursued and recovered, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, without requiring the Licensor to litigate everywhere directly. + +> Any commercial user of a Milestone Release without a valid Commercial Entitlement is, in effect, taking value the framework is designed to capture as Development Credit. A single, centrally-operated Licensor cannot practically pursue that value across every jurisdiction where a violation might occur. The Enforcement Network proposes that independent, locally-licensed legal practitioners ("Enforcement Partners") may pursue such violations in their home jurisdiction, funded by a share of what they recover, so that enforcement scales the same way the framework's other monetization already does: through aligned incentive rather than central capacity. + +--- + +## 1. Motivation + +`specs/TargetRevenueSourceLicense-V1C1.md` §3 restricts Commercial Use without a Commercial Entitlement. Like any license restriction, this is only as strong as its enforcement. A Licensor with one home jurisdiction's legal resources cannot practically: + +- detect unauthorized Commercial Use occurring in dozens of other jurisdictions; +- retain qualified local counsel in each one before a violation is even confirmed; +- fund upfront litigation costs against every plausible violation, most of which may not be worth pursuing to a distant, resource-constrained Licensor but might be entirely worth pursuing to a local practitioner who already operates in that market and bears no other case's costs. + +This is structurally the same problem the framework's core monetization model already solves for revenue: centralizing everything doesn't scale, but an explicit, transparent incentive structure can recruit distributed effort. The core Target Revenue Framework aligns commercial users' payments with Development Credit; the Enforcement Network proposes to align **local legal practitioners' pursuit of unpaid Commercial Use** with a share of what they recover. + +## 2. Scope + +This concept defines: + +- the minimal terminology of the Enforcement Network; +- the relationship between an Enforcement Partner, the Licensor, and the Trust Service; +- the Enforcement Action lifecycle (report → vetting → engagement → pursuit → recovery → allocation); +- the Recovery split (Contingency Share / Platform Share) and its integration with the existing Development Credit / Monetization Extension model; +- the central, framework-breaking legal risk this concept must not paper over: **contingency fees for lawyers are not universally available** — some jurisdictions ban or tightly restrict them, and the mechanism must degrade gracefully where they do; +- quality-control and anti-abuse principles needed before any Enforcement Action is authorized; +- the new legal instruments this concept requires beyond the License and Commercial Use Agreement. + +This concept does **not** yet define: + +- final legal text for an Enforcement Partner Agreement; +- a finalized, universal Contingency Share percentage (the 50% figure below is a **proposed working default**, not a settled rule — see §6); +- jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction legal feasibility findings (that is `workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md`'s job); +- the Trust Service's Enforcement Registry implementation. + +## 3. Design goals + +### 3.1 Locally lawful by construction + +The mechanism must not assume every jurisdiction permits the same fee structure. It must be designed from the start to route around jurisdictions where a direct lawyer contingency fee is unavailable, rather than being drafted for one jurisdiction and applied everywhere by assumption. + +### 3.2 No new discretionary authority for the Trust Service + +Consistent with the framework's existing principle (`specs/TargetRevenueFrameworkCore.md` §1.10: the Trust Service observes, records, calculates, and attests — never decides), the Trust Service must not become the body that decides whether an Enforcement Action is authorized, meritorious, or successful. Those are the Licensor's and the relevant legal system's decisions; the Trust Service records the resulting facts (an Enforcement Action exists, its status, its Recovery, its allocation), the same way it already records Development Credit and Remission Credit without deciding whether a Phase's commercial hypothesis was sound. + +### 3.3 Explicit allocation, not implied recovery + +Recovered amounts must be explicitly allocated between Contingency Share and Platform Share, and the Platform Share must be explicitly allocated toward Development Credit (or not) under a canonical Monetization Extension — following Rule 2 (explicit allocation) exactly as every other payment in the framework must. + +### 3.4 Quality control before incentive + +A 50%-of-recovery incentive is a strong one, and strong incentives attract both genuinely valuable enforcement and low-quality or frivolous claims. This concept must not treat "an Enforcement Partner is willing to take the case" as sufficient authorization on its own. + +## 4. Non-goals + +The Enforcement Network is not intended to: + +- replace the Licensor's own discretion over whether to pursue a given violation; +- guarantee that any jurisdiction's contingency-fee rules permit the mechanism as literally described; +- create a bounty system that rewards reporting a violation, as distinct from successfully litigating or settling one (see §7 — this concept currently contemplates compensating the Enforcement Partner's legal work, not a separate whistleblower/reporting bounty; whether those should be different roles with different incentives is an open question, §11); +- authorize an Enforcement Partner to act before a formal engagement instrument exists (§9); +- apply to Noncommercial Use — the Enforcement Network exists solely to pursue unauthorized **Commercial** Use under License §3. + +## 5. Minimal core terminology + +### 5.1 Alleged Violation + +A reported instance of apparent Commercial Use of a Milestone Release without a valid Commercial Entitlement for the applicable Phase. + +### 5.2 Enforcement Partner + +An independently practicing lawyer or law firm, licensed in a given jurisdiction, engaged by the Licensor under an Enforcement Partner Agreement to pursue one or more Alleged Violations in that jurisdiction. + +### 5.3 Enforcement Action + +A specific legal action (litigation, arbitration, demand/settlement negotiation, or equivalent local procedure) pursued by an Enforcement Partner against a specific party with respect to a specific Alleged Violation. + +### 5.4 Recovery + +The total amount actually collected as a result of an Enforcement Action (judgment, settlement, or equivalent), before any split. + +### 5.5 Contingency Share + +The portion of Recovery paid to the Enforcement Partner (or, where local law requires a different structure, to the Litigation Funder — see §8) for pursuing the Enforcement Action. **Working default: 50%**, per the Licensor's original proposal — not yet validated against any jurisdiction's fee-regulation limits (see `workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md`). + +### 5.6 Platform Share + +The remaining portion of Recovery after the Contingency Share, payable to the Licensor and subject to explicit allocation under §6. + +### 5.7 Enforcement Registry + +The Trust Service component that records Alleged Violations' status, Enforcement Partner engagement, Enforcement Action status, and Recovery/allocation facts, per §3.2's non-discretionary principle. + +### 5.8 Enforcement Partner Agreement (EPA) + +The instrument, distinct from the License, Commercial Use Agreement, and CLA, under which the Licensor engages an Enforcement Partner for a specific jurisdiction and/or Alleged Violation. See §9. + +## 6. Recovery allocation and Development Credit + +Recovery represents value the framework's Commercial Use restriction should already have captured. The Platform Share should therefore, by default, flow to Development Credit for the applicable Phase — this is arguably the single clearest case of "target-relevant allocation" the framework has, clearer even than a voluntarily-purchased Commercial Entitlement, since it corresponds to Commercial Use that already occurred without payment. + +Proposed canonical extension: `trsl:extension:enforcement-recovery`, with: + +```yaml +extension: + id: trsl:extension:enforcement-recovery + version: "0.1 (proposed)" + value: + description: Recovery collected from an Enforcement Action against unauthorized Commercial Use. + pricing: + method: court/settlement-determined, not priced by the Licensor + allocation: + rule: Platform Share (Recovery minus Contingency Share) becomes Development Credit for the applicable Phase in full, unless a specific portion is separately and explicitly allocated to reimbursing the Licensor's own direct costs of the Enforcement Action. + default_rate: 1.0 (of the Platform Share, not of gross Recovery) + recognition: + event: payment-settled (Recovery actually collected, not merely awarded) + reversal: + rule: A reversed or overturned Recovery (e.g. on appeal) generates a compensating credit-reversal Target Ledger entry. + evidence: + requirement: Enforcement Action case reference, settlement/judgment document, and Recovery collection evidence. + status: registered (proposed; not yet canonical) +``` + +This keeps Recovery fully inside the existing accounting model (Rule 2 explicit allocation, Rule 3 no duplicate credit) rather than inventing a parallel bucket. + +## 7. Enforcement Action lifecycle + +Extends the framework's five-verb lifecycle (`specs/TargetRevenueFrameworkCore.md` §3) with an enforcement-specific sub-lifecycle: + +1. **Report** — an Alleged Violation is reported (by anyone: the Licensor, a Trust Service operator, a third party, or an Enforcement Partner itself) to the Enforcement Registry. +2. **Vet** — the Licensor (not the Trust Service, per §3.2) reviews the Alleged Violation for plausibility before authorizing pursuit. See §10 for anti-abuse principles this step must satisfy. +3. **Engage** — the Licensor and a prospective Enforcement Partner in the relevant jurisdiction enter an Enforcement Partner Agreement scoped to the specific Alleged Violation(s). +4. **Pursue** — the Enforcement Partner conducts the Enforcement Action under local law and procedure. +5. **Recover** — a Recovery is collected (or the action concludes without one). +6. **Allocate** — Recovery is split into Contingency Share and Platform Share; the Platform Share is allocated per §6; all facts are recorded in the Enforcement Registry and, where applicable, the Target Ledger. + +## 8. The central legal risk: contingency fees are not universal + +**This is the concept's most important open question, and it must not be resolved by assumption.** + +Many legal systems restrict or prohibit a lawyer taking a direct percentage of a client's recovery: + +- Germany's Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz (RVG) §4a permits a conditional/contingency fee (*Erfolgshonorar*) only in narrow circumstances (broadly: where the client would otherwise be economically deterred from pursuing the claim at all) — a general-purpose 50% contingency arrangement as the Licensor describes it is very unlikely to qualify as drafted. +- Many civil-law jurisdictions historically treat *pactum de quota litis* (a lawyer's fee agreement tied to a percentage of the outcome) as a breach of professional ethics rules, though the details and degree of liberalization vary by country and have shifted over time. +- India's Bar Council of India Rules prohibit advocates from agreeing to fees contingent on the outcome of litigation. +- The United States, by contrast, permits contingency fees broadly (subject to state-bar reasonableness rules). +- The United Kingdom permits Conditional Fee Agreements and Damages-Based Agreements, but under statutory caps and structural conditions distinct from a plain 50% cut. + +**Working hypothesis (not yet validated — see `workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md`):** where a jurisdiction restricts direct lawyer contingency fees, the mechanism should separate two roles the Licensor's original proposal collapses into one: + +- **Litigation Funder** — a non-lawyer party (which may or may not be affiliated with the Trust Service operator) that bears the economic risk of the Enforcement Action and is contractually entitled to the Contingency Share, structured as a funding arrangement rather than a legal-fee arrangement; +- **Local Counsel** — the retained, locally-licensed lawyer or firm, compensated under whatever fee structure that jurisdiction's professional-conduct rules actually permit (hourly, fixed, capped conditional fee, etc.), paid by the Litigation Funder or the Licensor rather than receiving the Contingency Share directly. + +Where a jurisdiction does permit a lawyer to be both funder and counsel (the US being the clearest case), the Enforcement Partner role can collapse back into a single party, as originally envisioned. This split-role model is a **proposed design response to a real legal constraint**, not yet confirmed to be sufficient in any specific jurisdiction — third-party litigation funding is itself separately regulated (registration, disclosure, and champerty/maintenance doctrines in some common-law jurisdictions) and needs its own per-jurisdiction check. + +### 8.1 Findings so far (`workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md` T01–T03, T09) + +Four jurisdictions researched confirm the hypothesis above is directionally correct and give it concrete shape: + +- **Germany** — the single-role model is very likely **not** viable: RVG §4a permits contingency fees only for claims ≤€2,000, debt-collection, or cases where the client would otherwise be deterred, and even then requires a fixed-fee/uplift structure rather than a pure percentage. The split-role structure (§8) is the realistic path (`history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md`). +- **France** (second EU data point) — a fixed-fee-plus-uncapped-result-fee structure is permitted (pure percentage-only fees, *pactum de quota litis*, are void); likely single-role-viable with the right fee shape (`history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md` §2). +- **United States** — single-role is directly viable; the practical precondition is timely copyright registration of the Milestone Release to unlock statutory damages and fee-shifting that make contingent engagement economically attractive to counsel (`history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md`). +- **United Kingdom** — single-role is directly viable via a Damages-Based Agreement, and the **50% Contingency Share proposed in §5.5 is exactly the UK's statutory maximum** for this case category (not personal injury or employment) — the first jurisdiction where the original 50% figure lands precisely on a real regulatory ceiling rather than an arbitrary round number (`history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md`). + +A concrete Litigation Funder/Local Counsel mechanism design and payment-flow diagram, synthesizing these findings, is at `history/260729-TREN-MechanismDesign.md`. Five jurisdiction/family tasks (Argentina, India, China, Africa, Asia-Pacific) remain open in WP-0005 — the pattern above must not yet be assumed to generalize beyond the four jurisdictions actually researched. + +## 9. New legal instrument: Enforcement Partner Agreement (EPA) + +A fourth instrument type, alongside the License, Commercial Use Agreement, and (for contributors) the CLA. Should address, at minimum: + +- scope (which Alleged Violation(s) and jurisdiction the engagement covers); +- authorization (the Licensor's grant of authority to pursue the Enforcement Action on its behalf — likely a power of attorney or equivalent local instrument, not an assignment of the underlying copyright); +- Contingency Share / fee structure, jurisdiction-appropriate per §8; +- conduct standards and reporting obligations back to the Licensor; +- confidentiality and coordination with any Trust Service publication of the Enforcement Action's existence and status; +- termination and withdrawal (including the Licensor's ability to settle or withdraw independently of the Enforcement Partner's preference, and how that interacts with the Contingency Share if the Licensor settles directly). + +This instrument is not drafted in this concept document. It is a future deliverable, analogous to how the Commercial Use Agreement was recommended in `history/260729-TRSL-ContributorRights-Research.md` before being drafted as `specs/TargetRevenueCommercialUseAgreement-V1C1.md`. + +## 10. Quality control and anti-abuse principles + +A strong financial incentive to find and pursue violations creates real risk: aggressive or mistaken claims against parties who are actually within Noncommercial Use or who hold a valid Commercial Entitlement the Enforcement Partner simply didn't check for, reputational harm to the framework (compounding the risk already flagged for License §7.4's breach-naming mechanism), and adversarial dynamics resembling "copyright trolling" if registry admission and case vetting are too permissive. + +Proposed principles (not yet finalized): + +1. **Registry admission is not case authorization.** An Enforcement Partner may be registered as available in a jurisdiction without any specific Alleged Violation being authorized for pursuit. +2. **The Licensor vets before engagement**, per §7 step 2 — not the Trust Service (§3.2), and not the Enforcement Partner unilaterally. +3. **A minimum evidentiary bar** for an Alleged Violation to proceed to vetting (analogous to the Target Ledger's evidence tiering, `specs/TargetRevenueFrameworkCore.md` concept, working default Q10's E0/E1/E2 tiers) — e.g., some E1-equivalent showing of actual Commercial Use, not mere suspicion. +4. **Published Enforcement Action outcomes** (win/loss/settlement rate per Enforcement Partner) as a Trust Service transparency measure, giving the ecosystem the same kind of conformity signal License §7.4 already establishes for breaches — this could double as a check on Enforcement Partner quality over time. + +## 11. Open design questions + +1. Should reporting an Alleged Violation carry its own, smaller incentive, separate from the Contingency Share paid for successfully litigating it — i.e., should "finder" and "pursuer" be different, separately-compensated roles? Not resolved here. +2. Is 50% the right Contingency Share in jurisdictions that do permit direct lawyer contingency fees, or is that a Licensor-set parameter that should vary by expected case value/complexity? Currently a **working default**, not a rule. +3. How does an Enforcement Action's Recovery interact with License §7.4's breach-disclosure mechanism, given litigation is typically a public record already in most jurisdictions — does the CUA's opt-in naming election even apply to a party who was never a Commercial Entitlement holder in the first place (they had no CUA to route the election through)? +4. Should the Licensor bear the risk of an unsuccessful Enforcement Action (Enforcement Partner/Litigation Funder absorbs the loss, standard contingency structure) uniformly, or could some jurisdictions' fee-shifting rules ("loser pays") expose the Licensor to the losing defendant's costs — and if so, who bears that risk? +5. Does an Enforcement Partner's local engagement require the Licensor to have standing/presence recognized in that jurisdiction, or can a foreign copyright holder generally engage local counsel without separate registration? Jurisdiction-specific. +6. Should there be a cap on aggregate Enforcement Actions pursued against a single class of common, good-faith mistakes (e.g., a small business that exceeded Noncommercial Use inadvertently) before a lighter-touch remedy (a cure notice, as in License §7.2) is required, to avoid the Enforcement Network becoming disproportionate to ordinary License §7 breach-and-cure process for parties who already hold some relationship with the Licensor? + +## 12. Relationship to existing framework documents + +- **License (`specs/TargetRevenueSourceLicense-V1C1.md`)**: §3's Commercial Use restriction is what the Enforcement Network enforces; §7's breach/termination process governs parties who already hold a Commercial Entitlement, and is legally distinct from pursuing a party with **no** Commercial Entitlement at all (the latter is closer to infringement than to contract breach — see open question 3). +- **Commercial Use Agreement (`specs/TargetRevenueCommercialUseAgreement-V1C1.md`)**: not directly implicated, since Enforcement Actions target parties who lack one — but its §9 breach-disclosure mechanism is the closest existing analog for how Enforcement Action outcomes might be published. +- **Monetization Extension Specification**: §6 above proposes a new canonical extension, `enforcement-recovery`, following the existing six-field contract exactly. +- **Trust Service (`specs/TechnicalSpecificationDocument.md` §4.1)**: needs a new component, the Enforcement Registry, following the same observe/record/publish boundary as the existing Breach/Compliance Record component. + +## 13. Concise definition + +> The Enforcement Network is a proposed mechanism by which independent, locally-licensed Enforcement Partners pursue unauthorized Commercial Use of a Milestone Release in their home jurisdiction, funded by a Contingency Share of any Recovery, with the remaining Platform Share flowing to Development Credit for the applicable Phase. Because lawyer contingency fees are not available in every jurisdiction, the mechanism must be capable of separating the economic-risk-bearing role (Litigation Funder) from the locally-compliant legal-representation role (Local Counsel) where local professional-conduct rules require it, rather than assuming a single global fee structure works everywhere. diff --git a/workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md b/workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..782591f --- /dev/null +++ b/workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md @@ -0,0 +1,279 @@ +--- +id: TREV-WP-0005 +type: workplan +title: "Enforcement Network — legal feasibility and design research" +domain: infotech +repo: target-revenue +status: active +owner: claude +topic_slug: infotech +created: "2026-07-29" +updated: "2026-07-29" +--- + +# Enforcement Network — legal feasibility and design research + +Researches the legal feasibility of `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md`'s +core mechanism: independent Enforcement Partners pursuing unauthorized +Commercial Use in their home jurisdiction for a Contingency Share of +Recovery. This is a **distinct research axis from** `workplans/TREV-WP-0004-global-jurisdiction-research.md`: +WP-0004 asks whether the License/Commercial Use Agreement's own terms +(liability caps, data protection, choice of law) hold up per jurisdiction; +this workplan asks whether the *enforcement mechanism itself* — lawyers or +funders being paid a percentage of what they recover — is even legal in +each jurisdiction, which is a legal-services/professional-ethics question, +not a contract-enforceability question. + +**This workplan produces research artifacts, not final legal text or a +final Contingency Share percentage.** Per `SCOPE.md` and `CONTRIBUTING.md`, +no output may be treated as legal advice or as resolving an open question +in `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` without specialist counsel review +and the same human-accept gate already applied elsewhere in this repository. + +**Known central risk (already flagged in the concept doc, §8):** +contingency fees for lawyers are banned or tightly restricted in several +major jurisdictions (Germany foremost). Every jurisdiction task below must +explicitly answer: (a) can a lawyer in this jurisdiction be paid a +percentage of recovery directly; (b) if not, is a Litigation Funder / +Local Counsel split (concept §8) a viable workaround under this +jurisdiction's law; (c) what percentage or fee-structure limits apply +either way. + +**Deliverable convention:** same as WP-0004 — dated artifacts under +`history/`, only the synthesis task (T10) proposes edits to +`specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` directly, gated behind human accept. + +## Germany and EU-wide + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T01 +status: done +priority: high +``` + +Result 2026-07-29: `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md` produced. +Confirmed via search: RVG §4a permits contingency fees only in three narrow +gates (≤€2,000 claims, debt collection, or client-would-be-deterred), none +fitting TREN's likely fact pattern well — single-role Enforcement Partner +is very likely not viable in Germany, confirming concept §8's hypothesis. +France (second data point) permits a fixed-fee-plus-uncapped-result-fee +structure instead. EU-level litigation funding regulation is proposed +(2022 EP resolution) but not yet adopted; March 2025 Commission mapping +study found funding remains largely unregulated at EU level. + +Research German RVG §4a's narrow conditional-fee exception in detail +(exact conditions under which *Erfolgshonorar* is permitted); the +*pactum de quota litis* restriction's status and any liberalization trend +across major EU civil-law jurisdictions (at least France as a second +data point); EU-level third-party litigation funding regulation (the +2022 European Parliament resolution/proposed directive on responsible +private funding of litigation, if adopted or advanced); and practical +procedural routes for pursuing unauthorized Commercial Use as copyright/ +contract infringement in Germany (injunctive relief availability, typical +timeline, cost-shifting "loser pays" exposure). + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-Germany-EU.md`. + +## United States + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T02 +status: done +priority: high +``` + +Result 2026-07-29: `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md` produced. +Confirmed contingency fees are broadly permitted (single-role Enforcement +Partner viable), subject to state-bar reasonableness rules. Surfaced a +practical (not legal) precondition: contingent-fee copyright counsel +generally need timely copyright registration of the Milestone Release to +unlock statutory damages ($750-$30,000/work, up to $150,000 for willful +infringement) and fee-shifting — otherwise cases are hard to value. +Identified the Copyright Claims Board as a lower-cost venue option for +smaller Enforcement Actions. Litigation funding is permitted; the live +regulatory topic is disclosure, not prohibition. + +Research US contingency-fee availability (broadly permitted, subject to +state-bar reasonableness rules and some matter-type restrictions e.g. +family law/criminal defense); state-level litigation funding disclosure +and regulation trends; the historical champerty/maintenance doctrine's +much-reduced modern relevance; and typical US copyright/software-license +infringement procedure (statutory damages availability under the Copyright +Act where registration applies, injunctive relief, small-claims-adjacent +options such as the Copyright Claims Board for lower-value disputes). + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-US.md`. + +## United Kingdom + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T03 +status: done +priority: high +``` + +Result 2026-07-29: `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md` produced. +Confirmed the Damages-Based Agreement Regulations 2013 cap fee percentages +at 25% (personal injury), 35% (employment), and **50% for all other +cases** — the concept doc's proposed 50% Contingency Share lands exactly +on this real statutory ceiling for the case category an unauthorized- +Commercial-Use claim would fall into, the first jurisdiction where the +original figure is precisely validated rather than arbitrary. Conditional +Fee Agreements (fee-plus-uplift) are a second, more flexible option. +Litigation funding is a mature, self-regulated market (ALF Code of +Conduct); champerty/maintenance doctrines are largely set aside for +commercial funding. + +Research Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs) and Damages-Based Agreements +(DBAs) as the UK's structured alternative to a plain contingency fee, +including their statutory caps; the UK's well-established, self-regulated +third-party litigation funding market (Association of Litigation Funders +Code of Conduct); the historical champerty/maintenance doctrine's current +near-abolition for funded commercial litigation; and typical UK IP/breach +enforcement procedure. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-UK.md`. + +## Latin America (Argentina anchor) + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T04 +status: todo +priority: medium +``` + +Research *pacto de cuota litis* availability for Argentine abogados +(generally more permissive than continental Europe, often with statutory +caps) and the broader Latin American pattern this represents or diverges +from; local litigation-funding market maturity; and enforcement procedure +for unauthorized commercial software use. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-Argentina.md`. + +## India + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T05 +status: todo +priority: medium +``` + +Research the Bar Council of India Rules' prohibition on advocates +charging contingency fees, whether a Litigation Funder/Local Counsel split +(concept §8) is viable under Indian law and professional-conduct rules +given that prohibition, third-party litigation funding's legal status in +India (historically permitted for funders who are not the advocate +themselves, subject to some uncertainty), and IP enforcement procedure. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-India.md`. + +## China + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T06 +status: todo +priority: medium +``` + +Research Chinese lawyers' contingency-fee rules (permitted in specified +case types, typically capped, under Ministry of Justice regulation), +litigation funding's presence and regulatory treatment in China, and the +practical constraints a foreign copyright holder faces retaining local +counsel and pursuing enforcement in Chinese courts — building on +`workplans/TREV-WP-0004-global-jurisdiction-research.md` T06's finding +(if completed first) regarding foreign governing-law/venue enforceability. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-China.md`. + +## Africa (representative jurisdictions) + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T07 +status: todo +priority: medium +``` + +Research South Africa's Contingency Fees Act 1997 (a statutory framework +explicitly permitting capped contingency fees for attorneys — likely the +most permissive African anchor jurisdiction) and the OHADA zone's +French-derived restriction on *pacte de quota litis* as the civil-law +anchor, consistent with the representative-jurisdiction approach used in +WP-0004 T07. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-Africa.md`. + +## Asia-Pacific (beyond India and China) + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T08 +status: todo +priority: medium +``` + +Research Singapore's recent liberalization permitting Conditional Fee +Agreements for certain proceedings (a change from its historical +prohibition), Japan's customary success-fee arrangements under bar- +association guidelines, and Australia's mature, heavily-regulated +litigation funding market (a global hub for funded litigation) alongside +its state-variable rules on lawyer contingency/uplift fees. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Jurisdiction-AsiaPacific.md`. + +## Cross-cutting mechanism design + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T09 +status: done +priority: high +``` + +Result 2026-07-29: `history/260729-TREN-MechanismDesign.md` produced. +Synthesizes T01-T03 into a single Enforcement Partner Agreement template +with jurisdiction-conditional role structure: single-role (Local Counsel +receives Contingency Share directly — US, likely UK/France) vs. split-role +(Litigation Funder receives Contingency Share, pays Local Counsel under a +locally-compliant fee — Germany, likely much of continental Europe). +Platform Share and the Development Credit allocation rule (concept §6) +are unaffected by which structure applies — only the Contingency Share's +internal routing varies. Produced a payment-flow diagram and a six-clause +EPA outline. Explicitly notes the feasibility matrix is incomplete pending +T04-T08. + +Independent of any single jurisdiction: design the Litigation Funder / +Local Counsel split-role structure (concept §8) in enough concrete detail +to serve as an Enforcement Partner Agreement outline — who contracts with +whom, how the Contingency Share flows from Recovery to the Funder and from +the Funder (or Licensor) to Local Counsel, how standing/power-of-attorney +works for a foreign Licensor engaging local counsel, and what the +Enforcement Registry (Trust Service component) needs to record to keep +this auditable without the Trust Service making any of the underlying +legal decisions (concept §3.2, §10). + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-MechanismDesign.md`. + +## Synthesis: feasibility matrix and concept resolution + +```task +id: TREV-WP-0005-T10 +status: todo +priority: high +human_accept_required: true +``` + +Using T01–T09, produce a consolidated feasibility matrix (one row per +jurisdiction/family: direct lawyer contingency permitted? statutory cap? +litigation funding regulatory status? recommended structural variant) and +propose (but do not unilaterally apply) resolutions to +`specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §11's open questions, particularly +question 2 (is 50% viable, and where) and question 5 (foreign-Licensor +standing). Draft an Enforcement Partner Agreement outline (not full legal +text) reflecting T09's mechanism design plus the per-jurisdiction variants +this task identifies. + +**Human accept gate:** per the policy already applied to every other +candidate legal document in this repository. Agents may prepare the +synthesis and proposed concept-doc edits and leave this task `todo` — +"ready for review," not done. + +**Deliverable:** `history/-TREN-Synthesis.md`, plus proposed (not yet +applied) edits to `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md`.