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>
This commit is contained in:
tegwick 2026-07-29 18:44:48 +02:00
parent 8f316a466f
commit c7e23f5ef5
3 changed files with 78 additions and 42 deletions

View file

@ -344,26 +344,42 @@ applied) edits to `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md`.
---
**Added 2026-07-29 (maintainer request):** `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md`
§13 now defines a Global Contingency Share Determination Rule (50% where
lawful; otherwise the higher of the Jurisdiction Percentage Cap or a
Standard Bounty Amount — a fixed, non-percentage sum defaulting to
US $1,000 local-currency-equivalent, recalculated annually from a
>10-case sample where available, announced by 31 July, effective the
following 1 January). This task's synthesis must additionally:
**Added 2026-07-29 (maintainer request), revised 2026-07-29 (same day,
maintainer correction):** `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §13 defines
a sequential funding rule, not a "higher of two comparable numbers"
calculation: (1) 50% Contingency Share where an outcome-contingent fee is
lawful at that level; (2) else the jurisdiction's own lower lawful
outcome-contingent 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** (renamed from "Standard
Bounty Amount," precisely because a bounty paid only on success is still
outcome-contingent and would not escape the prohibitions tier 3 exists to
route around). The Standard Financing Amount is paid/available regardless
of outcome, defaults to US $1,000 local-currency-equivalent, recalculates
annually from a >10-case sample where available, is announced by 31 July,
and takes effect the following 1 January. §13.0 additionally makes explicit
that none of this creates any right to initiate a case — pressing charges
remains exclusively the Licensor's decision; the rule only makes a
ready default available once that decision is made.
This task's synthesis must additionally:
- Populate §13.2's Jurisdiction Percentage Cap for all 8 researched
jurisdictions/families from the T01T08 findings (values are already in
each jurisdiction's `history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-*.md` file and the
consolidated table in `specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md` §8.1).
- Treat §13.4 open question 1 (does a fixed, non-percentage bounty actually
escape outcome-contingency prohibitions worded around "contingent on
results," as opposed to prohibitions worded specifically around
percentage-proportional fees?) as the **highest-priority legal question**
in the entire WP-0005 program — it determines whether the Standard
Bounty Amount actually solves anything in India (Rule 20's wording) and
Germany, or merely relocates the same compliance problem.
- Resolve §13.4 open questions 24 (FX reference methodology, exact
18-month window definition, and how (A)/(B) interact with the
Litigation Funder/Local Counsel split where one applies) or state
plainly they remain open pending counsel.
- Resolve §13.5's five open questions: funding source for the Standard
Financing Amount (item 1); FX reference methodology (item 2); whether an
advanced Standard Financing Amount should be reimbursed from Recovery on
success (item 3, now a funding-recoupment question, no longer a
legal-compliance question since the fee itself is non-contingent either
way); the exact 18-month window definition (item 4); and how tier 3
interacts with the Litigation Funder/Local Counsel split-role structure
(item 5) — or state plainly which remain open pending counsel.
- Confirm the renamed Standard Financing Amount's non-contingent framing
actually holds up under India's Rule 20 ("a fee contingent on the results
of litigation") and Germany's §4a: the fee/financing must not, in
substance, depend on whether the case succeeds, only on whether it is
brought at all — this is now a design property to verify, not an open
question about the mechanism's basic viability the way the original
"fixed bounty" framing left unresolved.