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Introduction

The Legal Form Vocabulary vocabulary defined in RDFS allows to describe legal forms under which individuals or organizations carry on some kind of economic, charitable or in other ways beneficial activity. This includes but is not limited to forms of the private law such as the European SE or the German GmbH; But also cooperatives, associations or forms of the public law. The status of a legal form is usually gained by some formal registration within a jurisdiction but this is not always the case.

The vocabulary is available in the following serializations:

Status of this Document

This vocabulary has been developed by n-fuse GmbH and is intended for public use.

We consider the overall status experimental but it may already be used productively.

How to contribute

  • Express legal forms in the terms of LFOV
  • Map other ontologies to LFOV
  • Comment on the specification
  • Change the current draft

Revision history

{GIT_CHANGES}

Namespaces

This section is non-normative.

The namespace of the Legal Form vocabulary is https://w3id.org/legal_form# and the preferred prefix is lfov.

A full set of namespaces and prefixes used in this document is shown in the table below.

Prefix Namespace
rov http://www.w3.org/ns/regorg#
org http://www.w3.org/ns/org#
skos http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#
xsd http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#

Overview of the Vocabulary

This section is non-normative.

The key class is lfov:LegalForm which represents a legal form. The exact properties of a legal form are defined by the legislative authorities within its corresponding jurisdiction. This vocabulary defines properties to formally describe general aspects of a legal form – e. g. whether it is a commercial or non-commercial one.

This vocabulary makes use of classes and properties from several other vocabularies. Essential are the org:classification from The Organization Ontology and the skos:Concept from the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS).

Vocabulary Index

Classes:
  • [lfov:LegalForm](#the-legal-form-class)
Properties:
  • [lfov:name](#name)
  • [lfov:acronym](#acronym)
  • [lfov:legislation](#legislation)
  • [lfov:limitedLiability](#limitedLiability)
  • [lfov:shared](#shared)

Example

This section is non-normative.

The following is an example of a legal form defin in Germany which is described using the Legal Form vocabulary (in JSON-LD):

<http://legalforms.org/indivbiz> a <https://w3id.org/legal_form#LegalForm> ;
lfov:name "Einzelunternehmen"@de,
          "Sole Trader"@en-GB,
          "Sole Proprietorship"@en-US ;
<legislation> "http://sws.geonames.org/2921044/" ;
<limitedLiability> false .

Use of an instance of a legal form

<http://business.data.gov.uk/id/company/04285910>
  a rov:RegisteredOrganization ;
  rov:legalName "Apple Binding Ltd" ;
  rov:orgStatus <http://example.com/ref/status/NormalActivity> ;
  rov:orgType <http://legalforms.org/indivbiz> ;

Relationship with the Registered Organization Vocabulary

This section is non-normative.

Individuals of the class lfov:LegalForm are intended to be objects of the rov:orgType property. Therefore, it is typed as rdfs:Class and skos:Concept.

Vocabulary Definitions

The classes and properties are described in the following sub-sections.

The Legal Form Class

Class Notes
lfov:LegalForm Type rdfs:Class and skos:Concept

The Legal Form class is central to the vocabulary; It represents a legal form.

Properties

name

Property Domain Range
lfov:name
rdfs:subPropertyOf
skos:prefLabel 		lfov:LegalForm rdf:langString

The name defined by law.

acronym

Property Domain Range
lfov:acronym
rdfs:subPropertyOf
skos:altLabel 		lfov:LegalForm rdf:langString

The acronym defined by law.

legislation

Property Domain Range
lfov:legislation lfov:LegalForm

Legislation (e. g. a country or a union thereof), in which this legal form is defined.

limitedLiability

Property Domain Range
lfov:limitedLiability lfov:LegalForm xsd:boolean

The owners or members of the legal entity are not personally liable for the company's debts.

shared

Property Domain Range
lfov:shared lfov:LegalForm xsd:boolean

Defines whether the capital or the ownership itself is divided into shares.

Conformance

As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.

The key words must, must not, required, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional in this specification are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119.

A data interchange, however that interchange occurs, is conformant with the Legal Form vocabulary if:

  • it uses the terms (classes and properties) in a way consistent with their semantics as declared in this specification;
  • it does not use terms from other vocabularies instead of ones defined in this vocabulary that could reasonably be used.

A conforming data interchange:

  • may include terms from other vocabularies;
  • may use only a subset of Legal Form vocabulary terms.

A Legal Form application profile is a specification for data interchange that adds additional constraints. Such additional constraints in a profile may include:

  • a minimum set of required terms;
  • classes and properties for additional terms not covered in the Legal Form vocabulary;
  • controlled vocabularies or URI sets as acceptable values for properties;

The Legal Form vocabulary is technology-neutral and a publisher may use any of the terms defined in this document encoded in any technology although RDF and XML are preferred.