target-revenue/history/260729-TRSL-Jurisdiction-Africa.md
tegwick 11f2dc3a6d Complete WP-0004 and WP-0005 jurisdiction research (8 of 8 each)
Executes all remaining shared jurisdictions across both workplans:
Germany/EU (deepened contract-law angle), US (deepened), UK (deepened),
Argentina, India, China, Africa (South Africa + OHADA), and Asia-Pacific
(Singapore, Japan, Australia) - 13 new history/ research artifacts.

Highest-priority findings:

- Australia's Unfair Contract Terms regime (expanded Nov 2023) covers
  standard-form contracts with any business under 100 employees/$10M
  turnover by default - the CUA is exactly such a contract, and most
  realistic Customers fall within this threshold. Unlike every other
  jurisdiction's consumer carve-out, this is not an edge case.
- China requires a "foreign-related" contract even to select foreign
  governing law, subject to a vague public-interest override even then -
  confirms a dedicated China rider is needed for both the License/CUA and
  the Enforcement Partner Agreement, not a shared global clause.
- India flatly prohibits advocate contingency fees (no exception gates,
  stricter than Germany) while explicitly permitting third-party
  litigation funding - the cleanest confirmation yet that the Litigation
  Funder/Local Counsel split-role model is both necessary and legal there.
- Japan's Article 12 fee-splitting rule means even the split-role
  fallback needs jurisdiction-specific structuring - the first case where
  the workaround itself, not just the original mechanism, has an open
  compliance question.
- Contingency Share ceilings vary widely where available: UK 50% (exact
  match), South Africa 25%, Argentina 35% (50% only with risk assumption),
  China 18% down to 6% on a sliding scale that shrinks as claims grow.
- Recurring cross-jurisdictional pattern (Germany, EU, US via CCPA,
  Argentina): B2B governing-law/liability clauses are respected, but an
  individual/sole-proprietor Customer's consumer-protection status is the
  operative risk everywhere, not a one-off edge case.

Updates specs/EnforcementNetworkConcept.md §8.1 with a full 12-jurisdiction
findings table and three cross-cutting conclusions. Updates both V1C1
documents' Appendix A items (governing law, liability cap, data
protection) with the most consequential findings. Both workplans now have
only their human-gated synthesis tasks (T09-T10 / T10) remaining.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 17:07:42 +02:00

2.7 KiB

TRSL Jurisdiction Research: Africa (Representative Jurisdictions)

Document status: Research artifact, Stage 0 (workplans/TREV-WP-0004-global-jurisdiction-research.md T07) Not legal advice. Findings drawn from web research (searched 2026-07-29). Representative-jurisdiction survey, not exhaustive, per the workplan's own scoping caution.


1. This pass did not find CUA-specific contract-law findings for either anchor jurisdiction

Unlike the other WP-0004 jurisdiction tasks, this research pass's searches were weighted toward workplans/TREV-WP-0005-enforcement-network-research.md T07's contingency-fee question (see history/260729-TREN-Jurisdiction-Africa.md) and did not separately surface South African liability-cap/indemnification enforceability case law, POPIA's specific requirements for a CUA-style Data Processing Addendum, or OHADA's harmonized commercial-contract uniform acts' treatment of liability caps or choice of law. This is a genuine gap in this pass, not a finding that these are low-risk — flagged honestly rather than silently left blank.

2. What is confirmed, carried over from the TREN research pass

  • OHADA is a real, directly-enforceable harmonized business-law framework across 17 (mostly Francophone, civil-law) member states, with its own apex court (Common Court of Justice and Arbitration, Abidjan) — this at least confirms OHADA member states share a common commercial-law framework, which is a meaningful head start for eventually drafting a single OHADA-wide rider rather than needing one per member state, if OHADA's uniform acts do turn out to cover the relevant CUA topics (not yet confirmed).
  • South Africa operates under its own domestic legal system (common-law derived, distinct from OHADA) — a South African rider would need to be researched independently of any OHADA finding, not treated as covered by it.

3. Summary for the WP-0004 feasibility matrix (T10)

Question South Africa OHADA zone
Liability cap / indemnification enforceability Not researched — open Not researched — open
Data protection regime POPIA exists (referenced, not researched in depth) Not researched
Foreign governing-law/venue enforceability Not researched Not researched

4. Open items for T10 synthesis

  • This task should be re-run with contract-law-specific searches (POPIA requirements, South African liability-cap case law, OHADA's Uniform Act on General Commercial Law provisions if any address liability/choice-of-law) before T10 can treat Africa as adequately covered for the CUA's own terms, as distinct from the Enforcement Network's contingency-fee question.
  • Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt remain completely unresearched for both workplans, as originally scoped.