Law & liability

Swiss CO Art. 32 ff.: why Swiss agency law is ready for agents

The Swiss Code of Obligations has recognised agency since 1911: whoever acts in another's name with authority binds the person represented (Art. 32 CO). The provision is technology-neutral — it asks about authorisation and recognisability, not about the nature of the representative.

German Civil Code §§ 164 ff.: the German perspective

German agency law (§§ 164 ff. BGB) requires the agent's own declaration of intent, acting in another's name and power of representation. For AI agents the debate centres on attribution — and that is exactly where the mandate supplies the missing documentation layer.

The dispute: what the evidence chain brings to the table

In a conflict, what counts is not what happened but what can be proven. The evidence chain is built for this: append-only, hash-chained, protected against alteration at database level — with the path to qualified timestamps under Art. 41 eIDAS.

AI Act Art. 14: mandates as an oversight instrument

Art. 14 of the AI Act requires effective human oversight of high-risk systems; Art. 26 places obligations on deployers, Arts. 12/19 require record-keeping. Mandates are not compliance documentation about oversight — they are the oversight, as a mechanism.

Who is liable for what? The liability map of the agent economy

Four parties, four spheres of risk: the person granting the mandate is liable for actions within the mandate (it is their declared will); the agent operator for malfunction outside the instruction; the verifier for acceptance without checking; the infrastructure for wrong verification answers.