A new fair non-repudiation protocol for secure negotiation and contract signing

In some scenarios, such as B2B or IPR contracting, or by legal requirement, the participation of an e-notary in the contract signing is required in many cases, that is, an on-line TTP. This e-notary gives validity to the contract or performs some tasks related to the contract, such as contract registration or fraud detection. In these B2B or DRM contracting scenarios, two important additional features are needed: the negotiation of the e-contract and confidentiality. However, until now, e-contract signing protocols have not considered both of these as an essential part of the protocol. In this paper, we present a new protocol which is designed to make negotiation and contract signing secure and in a confidential way. Moreover, the protocol, compared to other previous proposals based on an on-line TTP, reduces the e-notary's workload. Finally, we describe how the protocol is being used in conjunction with an extended version of ODRL to achieve agreements on the rights of copyright works in a DRM infrastructure.