Review of any state web site for defining a business call this "Corporation". Not all corporations are companies, however. The actual restrictions on this class are exactly those appropriate for Corporation, but the text definition should be something like:

"A corporation is a separate legal entity owned by shareholders who enjoy protection from personal liability. Corporations are taxed annually on their earnings; corporate shareholders pay individual income tax on these earnings when they are distributed as dividends.

A corporation is managed by or under the direction of a board of directors, which generally determines corporate policy. Officers manage the day-to-day affairs of the corporation. Shareholders do not participate in day-to-day management activities. Management structure can be altered by committees of board members and shareholder agreements. Shareholders generally are not personally liable for obligations of the corporation."

Definition origin: http://www.business.ca.gov/StartaBusiness/DefiningaBusiness/Corporation.aspx

The Corporation class should have the following subclasses:

General Stock Corporation
Non-Profit Corporation
Benefit Corporation (which we have already in Functional Entities)
Common Interest Development Corporation

Non-Profit / benefit corporations have a corporate structure that can be defined using restrictions, and are not functional entities. They should be defined as kinds of corporations.

The name and definition of IncorporatedCompany are inadequate

This issue affects section 9.2.3, Corporate Bodies, section 9.3.1, Corporations Ontology, in the FIBO BE 1.0 Alpha specification, with downstream impact on section 9.7.1, Functional Entities, section 9.6.3, Corporate Ownership, section 9.6.4, Corporate Control, and section 9.4.1, Partnerships.

Further review of the current set of concepts and related definitions has led to the consensus that the BodyCorporate concept in the Corporate Bodies ontology and the concept of a Corporation, at the highest level of abstraction, are synonymous. Thus, the consensus is to rename BodyCorporate to Corporation, and integrate a source-able definition for it from a respected legal source, as long as that definition is essentially the same as what we currently have and is not jurisdiction-specific. Links to jurisdiction-specific definitions may be provided, however.

Additionally, a better name for the current IncorporatedCompany concept is GeneralStockCorporation, which corresponds to the broader meaning of the semantics in the current ontology for incorporated company. Again a better terminological definition should be sourced from an appropriate reference, as long as it is in keeping with the current text definition.

• • • The resolution of this issue assumes that the resolution to issues FBEF-3, resolving mechanical syntax issues, issues FBEF-4, FBEF-6, FBEF-7, and FBEF-9 through FBEF-12, which resolve issues related to modifications in FIBO FND by the 1.0 finalization process, as well as issues FBEF-20 through FBEF-24, FBEF-30, FBEF-31, FBEF-34, and FBEF-35, which resolve lint errors, reasoning issues due to the hasRole property, and miscellaneous annotation issues have already been applied.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the CorporateControl ontology should also be addressed. These include a number of missing labels, particularly on properties, as well as missing datatypes for some annotations.

There is also a bug in the VOM model with respect to duplicate proxy classes for IncorporatedCompany, one in the main model folder and one in the Proxies folder. These should be reconciled to eliminate the MagicDraw null pointer exception that arises when one attempts to find related information when clicking on one or the other proxy class.

Note that there are also missing definitions for properties and classes in this ontology that should be addressed under a separate issue.

Revise the CorporateControl ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues related to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the CorporateControl ontology should also be addressed. These include a number of missing labels, particularly on properties, as well as missing datatypes for some annotations.

There is also a bug in the VOM model with respect to duplicate proxy classes for IncorporatedCompany, one in the main model folder and one in the Proxies folder. These should be reconciled to eliminate the MagicDraw null pointer exception that arises when one attempts to find related information when clicking on one or the other proxy class.

Note that there are also missing definitions for properties and classes in this ontology that should be addressed under a separate issue.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

Revise the CorporateOwnership ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues due to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the CorporateOwnership ontology should also be addressed.

There is a need for FIBO to make a statement about Legal Entity. However there is ambiguity about the meaning of Legal Entity between the general legal defintion and between ISO 17742, which is more constrained.

Reconcile definition for Legal Entity

This issue affects section 9.2.1, Legal Persons, section 9.2.3, CorporateBodies, and section 9.2.4, LEIEntities, in the FIBO BE 1.0 Alpha specification, with downstream impact on section 9.7.1, Functional Entities, section 9.4.1, Partnerships, and section 9.5.1, Trusts.

The changes to the LegalPersons ontology include the introduction of a LegalEntity class, which, because of where it belongs in the hierarchy, has been added there rather than to the LEIEntities ontology, and incorporating a couple of related properties, one of which is moved from the LEIEntities ontology. One additional modification to the definition of StatutoryBody in LegalPersons, so that it can be used appropriately as the parent for regulatory agencies and other similar organizations, is also included.

One minor change to align the isincorporatedIn property with the new properties in LegalPersons is made to the CorporateBodies ontology.

Changes corresponding to those made in LegalPersons are made in LEIEntities – deleting the property that was moved, removing a restriction on ContractuallyCapableEntity and modifying the relationships between the LegalEntityIdentifier to correspond with the LegalEntity class in LegalPerson rather than to FormallyConstitutedOrganization. Three new classes are also introduced in LEIEntities, to cover those that are mentioned in the ISO 17442 standard, along with an additional property relating an entity to its address of legal formation, as indicated in the standard.

Minor revisions to FunctionalEntities, Partnerships, and Trusts, to integrate those ontologies with the revisions to LegalPersons and LEIEntities are also included.

The actual text of the resolution is provided in the attached MS Word document.

Several restrictions in FunctionalEntities are on the property takesForm, which was eliminated (with this definition) in foundations. In these cases, the restriction should instead be on the hasIdentity property in Relations.

Revise the FunctionalEntities ontology to reflect changes in FIBO FND

Several restrictions in FunctionalEntities are on the property takesForm, which was eliminated (with this definition) in foundations. In these cases, the restriction should instead be on the hasIdentity property in Relations.

The Publishers ontology was introduced to BE as a part of the Indices and Indicators (IND) specification. Alignment with FND involves making the Publication class a child of Document.

Revise the Publishers ontology to reflect the modifications made to FIBO FND

The Publishers ontology was introduced to BE as a part of the Indices and Indicators (IND) specification. Alignment with FND involves making the Publication class a child of Document.

In the process of finalizing FND, the property isDomiciledIn was moved from CorporateBodies (BE) to FormalOrganization (FND). This property needs to be removed now from CorporateBodies, to eliminate the duplication.

IsDomiciledIn property was moved from BE to FND

In the process of finalizing FND, the property isDomiciledIn was moved from CorporateBodies (BE) to FormalOrganization (FND). This property needs to be removed now from CorporateBodies, to eliminate the duplication.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

Additionally, in FND, the Control class changed names to ControllingCapacity, and the corresponding references need to be updated in this ontology to reflect the change.

Revise the ControlParties ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues due to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A lint issue related to the use of an equivalence relationship together with a subclass relation on the left-hand side of a related equation on the ControlledParty class has also been corrected, replacing the equivalent class relation with a subclass relation.

Additionally, in FND, the Control class changed names to ControllingCapacity, and the corresponding references need to be updated in this ontology to reflect the change. Similarly, the domain of the holds property in FND/Relations was modified to be an AutonomousAgent, so properties of relative parties in ControlParties that were subproperties of holds should be modified to remove this subproperty relationship.

Also, a Percentage class was added to FND/BusinessFacingTypes as a part of the FND revision, which is a better fit than the percentageValue datatype as the basis for representing the DegreeOfControl an EntityControllingParty has over another organization. The data property has been eliminated in favor of an object property between DegreeOfControl and Percentage, called hasPercentageControl, and a restriction on that property.

Finally, a handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the ControlParties ontology should also be addressed.

Pellet hangs when reasoning over the FunctionalEntities ontology, which appears to be caused by equivalences in the definitions of Business and Merchant. Relaxing these to be subclass relationships (i.e., changing them from necessary and sufficient conditions to just necessary conditions) eliminates the issue.

Correct reasoning error in Functional Entities caused by improper equivalence relations

Pellet hangs when reasoning over the FunctionalEntities ontology, which appears to be caused by equivalences in the definitions of Business and Merchant. Relaxing these to be subclass relationships (i.e., changing them from necessary and sufficient conditions to just necessary conditions) eliminates the issue. The issue corresponds to a "lint" error produced by Pellet in testing. Relaxing these to subclass relationships (i.e., changing them from a necessary and sufficient condition to just a necessary condition) eliminates the issue.

Pellet hangs when reasoning over the Corporate Bodies ontology, which appears to be caused by the equivalence in the definition of BodyCorporate to being constituted by an instrument of incorporation. The issue corresponds to a "lint" error produced by Pellet in testing. Relaxing this to a subclass relationship (i.e., changing it from a necessary and sufficient condition to just a necessary condition) eliminates the issue.

Potential reasoning error in Corporate Bodies caused by equivalence

Pellet hangs when reasoning over the Corporate Bodies ontology, which appears to be caused by the equivalence in the definition of BodyCorporate to being constituted by an instrument of incorporation. The issue corresponds to a "lint" error produced by Pellet in testing. Relaxing this to a subclass relationship (i.e., changing it from a necessary and sufficient condition to just a necessary condition) eliminates the issue.

This issue affects section 9.2.3, CorporateBodies Ontology, in the FIBO BE 1.0 Alpha specification.

• • • The resolution of this issue assumes that the resolution to issue FBEF-3, resolving mechanical syntax issues, and the resolution to FBEF-6, which addressed the migration from isDomiciledIn from BE to FND, have already been applied, FBEF-3, first, followed by FBEF-6.

In addition to correcting ”lint” issue, this resolution addresses the renaming of JudicialPerson in LegalPersons, as a part of issue resolution to FBEF-20, to JuridicalPerson.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

Revise LegalPersons to eliminate hasRole reasoning error

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the Partnerships ontology should also be addressed.

Revise the Partnerships ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues related to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the Partnerships ontology should also be addressed.

The Executives ontology contains a number of properties and/or restrictions that were impacted by modifications to the FIBO FND ontologies. These include, but may not be limited to:
(1) changing the domain of the appoints relation to be an AutonomousAgent, which is incompatible with its use in a restriction on the DeFactoControllingInterestParty class in an extended definition in Executives, as well as in a restriction on BoardOfDirectors, which is an EntityControllingParty
(2) changing the domain of the elects relation to be a LegalPerson, which is incompatible with its use in a restriction on the VotingShareholder class,
(3) several uses of hasRole, which should be modified to be isPlayedBy in all cases,
(4) migration of the constrains property from Relations to LegalCore, which causes a syntax error in a restriction on an extended definition of InstrumentOfIncorporation

Revise the Executives ontology to reflect the modifications made to FIBO FND

The Executives ontology contains a number of properties and/or restrictions that were impacted by modifications to the FIBO FND ontologies. These include, but may not be limited to:
(1) changing the domain of the appoints relation to be an AutonomousAgent, which is incompatible with its use in a restriction on the DeFactoControllingInterestParty class in an extended definition in Executives, as well as in a restriction on BoardOfDirectors, which is an EntityControllingParty
(2) changing the domain of the elects relation to be a LegalPerson, which is incompatible with its use in a restriction on the VotingShareholder class,
(3) several uses of hasRole, which should be modified to be isPlayedBy in all cases,
(4) migration of the constrains property from Relations to LegalCore, which causes a syntax error in a restriction on an extended definition of InstrumentOfIncorporation

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.C

Revise the Trusts ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues related to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the Trusts ontology should also be addressed.

Several modifications to FND impact the FormalBusinessOrganizations ontology. These include:
(1) moving isIdentifiedBy from Relations to Agents, and
(2) introduction of the IdentifiersAndIndices ontology under Arrangements, which has an impact on OrganizationIdentificationCode and OrganizationIdentificationScheme (OrganizationIdentificationCode should be renamed OrganizationIdentifier and made a child of Identifier, and OrganizationIdentificationScheme should be made a child of IdentificationScheme, and the hasUniqueIdentifier property would be eliminated as it is already present in the new parent class)

The migration of isIdentifiedBy causes a syntax error to occur in the ontology when loaded in any ontology tool.

Revise the FormalBusinessOrganizations ontology to reflect changes in FIBO FND

Several modifications to FND impact the FormalBusinessOrganizations ontology. These include:
(1) moving isIdentifiedBy from Relations to Agents, and
(2) introduction of the IdentifiersAndIndices ontology under Arrangements, which has an impact on OrganizationIdentificationCode and OrganizationIdentificationScheme (OrganizationIdentificationCode should be renamed OrganizationIdentifier and made a child of Identifier, and OrganizationIdentificationScheme should be made a child of IdentificationScheme, and the hasUniqueIdentifier property would be eliminated as it is already present in the new parent class)

During the FND FTF process, the strategy for metadata headers, which ontologies to import, ontology naming, and related conventions were revised. The BE ontologies require revision to support the current strategy. This includes:
(1) eliminate the default namespace,
(2) revise the metadata to use the revised metadata strategy put into place for FND, including the approach to model licensing, and reference the about files,
(3) shorten the ontology name,
(4) revise imports such that only those ontologies that are actually referenced in the body of the ontology are actually imported, and
(5) make sure every annotation includes its datatype.

Mechanical / formatting changes to all BE ontologies per FND methodology

All of the files incorporated in this upload (which is all of the main BE ontologies aside from the about files) have been updated to reflect the changes specified in the issue resolution.

Changes to the specification to reflect the revised metadata will be auto generated at the end of the FTF work.

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

Revise the OwnershipParties ontology to eliminate potential reasoning issues due to hasRole

Testing with various reasoners and test data shows that reasoning over the hasRole relationship in some circumstances returns incorrect results. Replacing the hasRole property with isPlayedBy corrects this issue.

The OwnershipParties ontology also included a dependency on the isOwnedBy property in FND/Ownership, whose domain changed as a result of the FND FTF 2 work. The corresponding revision has been made in this ontology.

A handful of minor discrepancies in annotations that were missed via corrections for mechanical / syntax changes to the OwnershipParties ontology have also been addressed.

The identifies property, which is used in a restriction on LegalEntityIdentifier, was moved from Relations to Agents in FND, which causes a syntactic error in LEIEntities. Also, in FormalBusinessOrganizations, OrganizationIdentificationCode was renamed to OrganizationIdentifier, and the corresponding change is required in LEIEntities.

Correction for identifies move from Relations to Agents to LEIEntities

The identifies property, which is used in a restriction on LegalEntityIdentifier, was moved from Relations to Agents in FND, which causes a syntactic error in LEIEntities. Also, in FormalBusinessOrganizations, OrganizationIdentificationCode was renamed to OrganizationIdentifier, and the corresponding change is required in LEIEntities.

Several changes made to FIBO FND impact the Corporations ontology, including: (1) migration of identifies and isIdentifiedBy from Relations to Agents, (2) the introduction of FinancialDates, and (3) the introduction of IdentifiersAndIndices. The first of these causes bugs when the Corporations ontology is loaded in Protege.

Revise the Corporations ontology to reflect changes in FIBO FND

Several changes made to FIBO FND impact the Corporations ontology, including: (1) migration of identifies and isIdentifiedBy from Relations to Agents, (2) the introduction of FinancialDates, and (3) the introduction of IdentifiersAndIndices. The first of these causes bugs when the Corporations ontology is loaded in Protege.

"About" files for the FIBO BE specification, at the specification level and at the module level, are needed in order to reduce the amount of repetitive material in the headers of the individual ontologies. This follows the approach taken for the FIBO Foundations (FND) 1.0 specification.

About files for the BE ontology and modules are needed

The "about" files provide content describing the BE specification and modules, complementing the content in the specification itself and in some cases duplicating it in the form of RDF/XML metadata, primarily for use in (1) describing the machine-readable files for any users of those files, (2) for potential use in tagging the specification document on the OMG site, and (3) to provide a high-level ontology in the case of AboutBE-1.0.rdf that imports all of the others, to support ease of use.

This revision is to machine readable files only, and does not impact the specification document.

At the moment all we have is &fibo-be-corp-corp;hasLegalFormAbbreviation of type text.
The legal form should be a class in its own right with abbreviation as one of many properties (or a label), including the jurisidiction/country where it's used and some annotations describing the legal aspects. It should also be related to some of the standard classes such as IncorporatedCompany.

Need better modeling of legal forms

At the moment all we have is &fibo-be-corp-corp;hasLegalFormAbbreviation of type text.

The legal form should be a class in its own right with abbreviation as one of many properties (or a label), including the jurisidiction/country where it's used and some annotations describing the legal aspects. It should also be related to some of the standard classes such as IncorporatedCompany.

Resolutoin of this issue requires further research, and thus it is deferred to FTF 2.