New concept: Enforcement Network (contingency-incentivized violation enforcement)

Introduces specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md: independent, locally-licensed
Enforcement Partners pursue unauthorized Commercial Use (License §3
violations) in their home jurisdiction for a Contingency Share of Recovery,
so enforcement scales the way the framework's monetization already does -
through aligned incentive rather than central litigation capacity. New
terminology (Alleged Violation, Enforcement Action, Recovery, Contingency
Share, Platform Share, Enforcement Registry, Enforcement Partner Agreement)
plus a proposed enforcement-recovery Monetization Extension so Recovery
flows into Development Credit through the existing accounting model rather
than a parallel bucket.

Flags the mechanism's central risk up front rather than assuming it away:
lawyer contingency fees are not legal everywhere. Backed by
workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md (10 tasks); four
executed this session with live web research:

- Germany/EU: RVG §4a permits contingency fees only in three narrow gates,
  none fitting this fact pattern well - single-role Enforcement Partner is
  very likely not viable; France permits a fixed-fee-plus-uncapped-result-
  fee structure instead; EU litigation-funding regulation is proposed
  (2022 EP resolution) but not yet adopted.
- US: contingency fees broadly permitted; practical precondition is timely
  copyright registration of the Milestone Release to unlock statutory
  damages/fee-shifting; Copyright Claims Board flagged as a lower-cost venue.
- UK: Damages-Based Agreements cap fees at 50% for this case category -
  the concept's originally-proposed 50% Contingency Share lands exactly on
  this real statutory ceiling, the first jurisdiction where the figure is
  precisely validated rather than arbitrary.
- Mechanism design: synthesizes the above into a single Enforcement Partner
  Agreement template with jurisdiction-conditional role structure
  (single-role vs. Litigation Funder/Local Counsel split), with a payment-
  flow diagram showing the Development Credit allocation is unaffected by
  which structure applies.

Six of ten WP-0005 tasks remain open (Argentina, India, China, Africa,
Asia-Pacific, and the human-gated synthesis). Cross-referenced from README.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

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.

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.

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.

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.