Contract

• CURIE: gmeow:Contract
• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/Contract
• Category: class
• Defined by: gmeow:slices/agreements
• Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)

A legally enforceable agreement — an Agreement whose obligations are backed by a legal order, distinguished from a bare understanding only by that enforceability.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:Agreement

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:Contract as a specialized kind of gmeow:Agreement. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Employment Contract

• Source: slices/core/agreements/examples/employment-contract.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-agreements-examples-employment-contract

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: an agreement as a relator. A gmeow:Agreement (here a
# gmeow:Contract, the legally-enforceable specialization) is a gufo:Relator that
# binds its parties via gmeow:hasParty — the agreement IS the relationship, not a
# property of either party. It bears a structured gmeow:AgreementName (an
# Appellation, so multilingual co-equal titles are first-class). Other relators
# can be gmeow:foundedOn it: the employment Membership below exists BECAUSE of the
# contract, so its grounding is recorded rather than assumed.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/agreements/> .

# --- The contract: a relator binding the two parties, bearing a formal name.
#     (Validity bounds — gmeow:validFrom/validUntil — are statement-level RDF-1.2
#     annotations, carried in the statement layer rather than as A-box triples.)
ex:contract a gmeow:Contract ;
    gmeow:hasParty         ex:acme , ex:dana ;
    gmeow:hasAgreementName ex:contractName .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:Agreement

Usage Advice

Use when

• Use when an agreement's obligations are backed by a legal order and enforceability is the distinguishing fact — a supply contract, a licence, an employment agreement.

Avoid when

• Avoid for a non-binding understanding or informal arrangement (use the parent gmeow:Agreement) and for the teleological promise itself (gmeow:Commitment); the legal-document wrapper and clauses live in their own constructs, not on this class.

How to use

• Type the relator as Contract, bind the parties with gmeow:hasParty, and ground dependent relators on it with gmeow:foundedOn; carry the validity window and the title on the relator rather than overloading the type.

Examples

• ex:supplyContract a gmeow:Contract; gmeow:hasParty ex:buyer, ex:supplier.