The SOU is an oral contract that addresses Indigenous intellectual property rights by stripping away the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) typically used in similar circumstances, to its bare, legal essence. Created to protect Indigenous intellectual property rights, the SOoU is a legally binding commitment that bridges the gap between Western and Indigenous approaches to agreement-making. It reconciles the differences between Western contract law and Indigenous concepts of collective obligation, often based on orally shared understandings.

Unlike traditional contracts, which rely on human participants, smart contracts are deemed “smart” because they are computationally performed. The SOU will be encoded into a public blockchain, selected for features like security and environmental sustainability. Its vision is to use smart-contracting technology to transform oral oaths of understanding into binding obligations, which are supported by transparently encoded, policy-related, provenance-tracing technologies. In the future, the SOU could evolve into a Nagoya Protocol–esque framework for transparently tracking the flow of intellectual property and associated benefit-sharing pledges relating to Indigenous resources and technologies.

The SOU is being piloted as its next phase, incorporating enhancements that aim to foster value-exchange frameworks between the successors in interest to both settler and indigenous communities, introducing a more holistic and expansive approach to understanding value and exchange. This initiative seeks to transcend traditional concepts of sovereignty and intellectual and physical property rights, incorporating a cyclical understanding of time and a recognition of the interconnectedness of all peoples and beings.

We anticipate that the next versions of the SOU—complemented by a suite of modular smart oaths and addenda for recognition, atonement, and reparation—will be integral to Comar Mollé’s broader initiative to use blockchain technology to lay the groundwork for a new legal ecosystem. This is a step towards a future where legal agreements are not merely static documents but empowering living instruments of perpetual alignment that evolve with the changing needs and values of the communities they serve.