Fix Contingency Share rule: non-contingent financing, not a disguised bounty
Per maintainer correction: the previous "Standard Bounty Amount" was still
paid only on success, meaning it remained outcome-contingent and would not
actually escape prohibitions worded around outcome-contingency generally
(India's Rule 20: "a fee contingent on the results of litigation") rather
than percentage-proportionality specifically (Germany's quota-litis-style
rules). Renamed to "Standard Financing Amount" and restructured as a fixed
sum paid or made available regardless of the Enforcement Action's outcome
- a grant toward litigation cost, not a contingent fee in any form.
specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md §13 rewritten as a sequential rule
rather than "higher of two comparable numbers" (contingent percentages and
non-contingent financing are not commensurable, and treating them as
interchangeable is exactly what would make the financing look like a
disguised contingent fee):
1. 50% Contingency Share where lawful at that level.
2. Else the jurisdiction's own lower lawful outcome-contingent cap.
3. Else - no lawful outcome-contingent fee exists at all - no
Contingency Share; the Licensor's own non-contingent fee arrangement
with its lawyer governs what's owed win or lose, and the Trust
Service's Standard Financing Amount offsets that cost regardless of
outcome. Fee risk is genuinely higher here, by design: this is what
it means for the risk-shifting a contingent fee normally provides to
be unavailable, not an oversight to paper over.
New §13.0 makes explicit (per maintainer instruction) that nothing in this
rule creates a right for the Trust Service, an Enforcement Partner, or a
Litigation Funder to initiate a case - pressing charges remains
exclusively the Licensor's decision. The rule only makes a ready,
low-friction default (published caps, financing, EPA template) available
once that decision is made.
Added new core term §5.9 Standard Financing Amount; updated §5.5-5.7, §6's
lifecycle step, §9's EPA outline, and the concise definition to match.
Updated WP-0005 T10's synthesis scope and README accordingly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Extracted and stabilized from the concept draft under `workplans/TREV-WP-0003-no
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[`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`; 9 of 10 tasks are done (all 8 jurisdictions plus mechanism design — see `history/260729-TREN-*.md`), only the human-gated synthesis remains. Findings: 50% is only exactly valid in the UK; most jurisdictions cap lower (18–35%) or ban direct lawyer contingency outright (Germany, India); India cleanly confirms the split-role model is both necessary and legal there; Japan's fee-splitting rule means even the split-role fallback needs jurisdiction-specific structuring, not just an availability check.
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The concept's §13 now defines a **Global Contingency Share Determination Rule**: 50% where lawful, otherwise the higher of the local percentage cap or a published Standard Bounty Amount (a fixed sum, not a percentage — defaulting to $1,000 local-currency-equivalent, recalculated annually from case data, announced by 31 July for the following 1 January). This is a deliberate design response to the finding above, but it introduces its own open question flagged prominently in §13.4: whether a *fixed* bounty actually escapes contingency-fee prohibitions worded around outcome-contingency generally (e.g., India's Rule 20) rather than percentage-proportionality specifically — not yet confirmed.
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The concept's §13 now defines a **Global Contingency Share Determination Rule**, sequential rather than a "pick the higher number" calculation: (1) 50% where an outcome-contingent fee is lawful at that level; (2) else the jurisdiction's own lower lawful cap; (3) else — where no outcome-contingent fee is lawful at all (Germany, India) — **no Contingency Share**, and instead a non-contingent **Standard Financing Amount** (a fixed sum, paid regardless of outcome, defaulting to $1,000 local-currency-equivalent, recalculated annually, announced by 31 July for the following 1 January) toward the cost of bringing the case. Because it doesn't depend on winning, it isn't a contingent fee at all — a deliberate fix after an earlier draft's "fixed bounty" framing was still outcome-contingent (paid only on success) and so would not have escaped prohibitions like India's Rule 20 ("a fee contingent on the results of litigation"). §13.0 also makes explicit that none of this creates a right to sue — pressing charges remains exclusively the Licensor's decision; the rule only makes a ready, low-friction default available once that decision is made.
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## Repository layout
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