Relations are intended to represent semantic links between words in every existing language.
They can be ontological (such as "icl" and "iof"), logical (such as "and" and "or"), or thematic (such as "agt" = agent, "ins" = instrument, "tim" = time, "plc" = place, etc.).
In January 2001, the United Nations University set up an autonomous and non-profit organization, the UNDL Foundation, to be responsible for the development and management of the UNL program.
The overall architecture of the UNL System has been developed with a set of basic software and tools.
It was recognized by the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) for the "industrial applicability" of the UNL, which was obtained in May 2002 through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); the UNL acquired the US patents 6,704,700 and 7,107,206.