  The use of Structured English as a computation independent knowledge
representation format for non-technical users in business rules representation
has been proposed in OMGs Semantics and Business Vocabulary Representation
(SBVR). In the legal domain we face a similar problem. Formal representation
languages, such as OASIS LegalRuleML and legal ontologies (LKIF, legal OWL2
ontologies etc.) support the technical knowledge engineer and the automated
reasoning. But, they can be hardly used directly by the legal domain experts
who do not have a computer science background. In this paper we adapt the SBVR
Structured English approach for the legal domain and implement a
proof-of-concept, called KR4IPLaw, which enables legal domain experts to
represent their knowledge in Structured English in a computational independent
and hence, for them, more usable way. The benefit of this approach is that the
underlying pre-defined semantics of the Structured English approach makes
transformations into formal languages such as OASIS LegalRuleML and OWL2
ontologies possible. We exemplify our approach in the domain of patent law.
