RE: Organization ontology
In the law, there are two concepts (a) Person and (b) Entity. In simple terms: A person is a human. An entity is a non-human. Generally, these terms are used to distinguish who has the capacity to sue, be sued, or who lacks the capacity to sue or be sued. A person (human) can sue or be sued in an individual capacity, with certain exceptions for juveniles, those who are legally insane, or who otherwise are deemed or adjudicated under the law to lack legal capacity. An entity must exist as a legal person under the laws of a state. An entity's existence under the laws of a state occurs either through registration (usually with the secretary of state) or by operation of law (can happen with a partnership). Generally, anything else is not a entity. For example, you cannot sue a group of people on a beach as a entity - you would have to name each person individually. This is true, because the group of people on a beach typically have done nothing to form a legally recognized entity. From a legal perspective, calling something a Legal Entity is redundant; although from a non-legal perspective, it may provide clarity. In contrast a legal person is not redundant because most legal minds would understand this to mean an entity (i.e., a person with the capacity to sue and be sued that is not a human person). From a data modeling perspective, I find it straightforward to use the terms Person and Organization because (a) typically only lawyers understand Entity and (b) the data model for an organization tends to work for both (legal) entities and for organizations that might not fully meet the legal requirements for an entity. Taking the example below, a large corporation or government agency (both of which are [legal] entities) might be organized into non-legal divisions, subdivisions, departments, groups, etc, that are not (legal) entities but still might operate like, and need to be named as, an organization. Some companies have subsidiaries that are legal (entities). By adding OrganizationType to the Organization data model, you provide the ability to modify the type of organization and can then represent both (legal) entities and (legally unrecognized) organizations. Taxing authorities (e.g., the IRS) have different classifications for entities. An S Corporation, C Corporation, and a Non-Profit Corporation are all (legal) entities, even though their tax status differs. Hope this is helpful for what it is worth. Todd See also U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 17. From: public-egov-ig-requ...@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-requ...@w3.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Logan Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 7:50 PM To: Mike Norton Cc: public-egov...@w3.org; Dave Reynolds; William Waites; Linked Data community; William Waites; Emmanouil Batsis (Manos) Subject: Re: Organization ontology Large corporations often have multiple legal entities and many informal, somewhat overlapping business organizations. Just saying. I wrangled with that. There're several different use cases for these for internal vs external, customer/vendor, financial vs operations, etc. On Jun 7, 2010 3:19 PM, Mike Norton xsideofparad...@yahoo.commailto:xsideofparad...@yahoo.com wrote: I can see Manos' point. It seems that LegalEntity rather the Organization would work well under a sub-domain such as .LAW or .DOJ or .SEC, but under other sub-domains such as .NASA, the Organization element might be better served as ProjectName. All instances would help specify the Organization type, while keeping Organization as the general unstylized element is probably ideal, as inferred by William Waites. Michael A. Norton From: Emmanouil Batsis (Manos) ma...@abiss.grmailto:ma...@abiss.gr a) the way i get FormalOrganization, it could as well be called LegalEntity to be more precise
RE: Organization ontology
In case this is helpful, the following are the high-level templates I typically
use when modeling Person and Organization. These can/do change based on the
application. One of the goals of these structures is to keep the two objects
as similar as possible.
Organization
organizat...@organizaitontype
- Name (1)
- AlternateNames (0-many)
- ContactPerson (0-1)
- Addresses (0-many)
- Phones (0-many)
- Emails (0-many)
- Websites (0-many)
- Identifiers (0-many)
- Roles (0-many)
-- Name (1)
-- Identifier (1)
-- RoleAssociations (0-many)
Person
- Name (1)
- AlternateNames (0-many)
- ContactOrganization (0-1)
- Addresses (0-many)
- Phones (0-many)
- Emails (0-many)
- Websites (0-many)
- Identifiers (0-many)
- Descriptions (0-many)
- Roles (0-many)
-- Name (1)
-- Identifier (1)
-- RoleAssociations (0-many)
The content models for Name, AlternateName and Identifiers differ for Person
and Organization; Organization includes @OrganizationType, and ContactPerson
and ContactOrganization are switched, but otherwise the model is the same.
This is not intended to be a one size fits all model. Different applications
have different needs. This is just one way to do it that I have found works
well in a number of situations.
Again, hope this is helpful,
Todd
-Original Message-
From: public-egov-ig-requ...@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-requ...@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Emmanouil Batsis (Manos)
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 6:04 PM
To: William Waites
Cc: William Waites; Dave Reynolds; Linked Data community; public-egov...@w3.org
Subject: Re: Organization ontology
On 06/08/2010 12:27 AM, William Waites wrote:
On 10-06-03 16:04, Dave Reynolds wrote:
It would be great if you could suggest a better phrasing of the
description of a FormalOrganization that would better encompass the
range of entities you think should go there? Or are you advocating
that the distinction between a generic organization and a externally
recognized semi-autonomous organization is not a useful one?
Reading the rest of your mail, I think the latter. Do we really need
FormalOrganisation at all? Can we not just have Organisation and then
some extension vocabulary could have subclasses for different flavours
of partnerships, corporations, unincorporated associations etc. as
needed?
Sorry for jumping in. I was thinking that
a) the way i get FormalOrganization, it could as well be called LegalEntity to
be more precise.
b) what happens when organizations change legal status?
More on the latter - If you'd like to make having evolving graphs easier, you
might as well make some legal-status a property and have anyone use URIs that
work best for them.
Which BTW makes adoption easier as well; Gov's might even pick it up and adapt
to their local legal definitions of organization types or something, but any
logic code made for plain old Organization will know how to deal with those.
Cheers,
Manos
--
Manos Batsis, Chief Technologist
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RE: Organization ontology
Mike: I purposely am avoiding using OrganizationType . . . Note that: Tax Status = C Corp, S-Corp, Non-Profit Entity (Types) (Private) = Corporation, Limited Liability Company (LLC), Partnership, Limited Liability Partnership, Trust (there are others) Entity (Types) (Public) = State, County, Municipality, Agency, Court, Parrish (there are others) The above are U.S. terms, not international. I use Roles and RoleAssociations to show relationships among unique people and organizations. ABC, Inc. - Role = Parent Company - Identifer = ABC001 - RoleAssociation = XYZ001 XYZ, Inc. - Role = Subsidiary - Identifier = XYZ001 - RoleAssociation = ABC001 Jason Taylor - Role = CEO - Identifier = CEO001 - RoleAssociation = ABC001 - Role = Shareholder - Identifier = Shareholder001 - RoleAssociation = XYZ001 I use alternate names to refer to the same person or entity using a different name. ABC, Inc. dba Neighborhood Pool Cleaners Organization - Name = ABC, Inc. - AlternateName = Neighborhood Pool Cleaners - alternaten...@alternatenametype = Doing Business As Use sunscreen. ☺ Todd From: Mike Norton [mailto:xsideofparad...@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 12:14 AM To: Todd Vincent Cc: Patrick Logan; public-egov...@w3.org; Dave Reynolds; William Waites; Linked Data community; William Waites; Emmanouil Batsis (Manos) Subject: Re: Organization ontology Thanks for this, Todd. Personally, I love the persons on a beach scenario, because it is provocative and, quite simply, persons on a beach! I was looking at Organization as an outsider of the legal profession , referring to LegalEntity with C-Corps, S-Corps, and such in mind. OrganizationType would be a great attribute to help further delineate the complex web of organizations that do comprise the space, and perhaps further describe the Organization's Merger status, Acquisition status, or other Exchange-relative markup. Michael A. Norton From: Todd Vincent todd.vinc...@xmllegal.org To: Patrick Logan patrickdlo...@gmail.com; Mike Norton xsideofparad...@yahoo.com Cc: public-egov...@w3.org public-egov...@w3.org; Dave Reynolds dave.e.reyno...@googlemail.com; William Waites william.wai...@okfn.org; Linked Data community public-lod@w3.org; William Waites ww-keyword-okfn.193...@styx.org; Emmanouil Batsis (Manos) ma...@abiss.gr Sent: Mon, June 7, 2010 8:27:11 PM Subject: RE: Organization ontology In the law, there are two concepts (a) Person and (b) Entity. In simple terms: A person is a human. An entity is a non-human. Generally, these terms are used to distinguish who has the capacity to sue, be sued, or who lacks the capacity to sue or be sued. A person (human) can sue or be sued in an individual capacity, with certain exceptions for juveniles, those who are legally insane, or who otherwise are deemed or adjudicated under the law to lack legal capacity. An entity must exist as a legal person under the laws of a state. An entity's existence under the laws of a state occurs either through registration (usually with the secretary of state) or by operation of law (can happen with a partnership). Generally, anything else is not a entity. For example, you cannot sue a group of people on a beach as a entity – you would have to name each person individually. This is true, because the group of people on a beach typically have done nothing to form a legally recognized entity. From a legal perspective, calling something a Legal Entity is redundant; although from a non-legal perspective, it may provide clarity. In contrast a legal person is not redundant because most legal minds would understand this to mean an entity (i.e., a person with the capacity to sue and be sued that is not a human person). From a data modeling perspective, I find it straightforward to use the terms Person and Organization because (a) typically only lawyers understand Entity and (b) the data model for an organization tends to work for both (legal) entities and for organizations that might not fully meet the legal requirements for an entity. Taking the example below, a large corporation or government agency (both of which are [legal] entities) might be organized into non-legal divisions, subdivisions, departments, groups, etc, that are not (legal) entities but still might operate like, and need to be named as, an organization. Some companies have subsidiaries that are legal (entities). By adding OrganizationType to the Organization data model, you provide the ability to modify the type of organization and can then represent both (legal) entities and (legally unrecognized) organizations. Taxing authorities (e.g., the IRS) have different classifications for entities. An S Corporation, C Corporation, and a Non-Profit Corporation are all (legal) entities, even though their tax status differs. Hope this is helpful for what it is worth. Todd See also U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 17
