🚀 go-pugleaf

(cross-posted to misc.legal because my site doesn't get
trial.misc.legal.software (and barring a "real" misc.legal.software
misc.legal is appropriate)).

    [a proposed organization called] 
    SIPRIG is dedicated to furthering the software community's knowledge of
    what intellectual property rights are claimed by programmers. For any
    program on the market, SIPRIG wants to know what kind of copyrights and
    patents protect it. SIPRIG also wants to know if there are any trade
    secrets in it, though of course it can't ask what those secrets are.

Unfortunately, it is hard to know these things.

For patents, any granted patent can be looked up (with sufficient
effort and/or money), but pending patents are kept secret.

For user interface copyrights, the situation is less clear.  One point
of view is that only those things filed for in the copyright
registration are protected.  Since one has to register under a
particular category (e.g. non-dramatic literary works, which is the
category typically used to copyright a computer program, or visual
works, which is what you might use to copyright a screen display), and
one can only copyright a given work once, it would be impossible to
file for a copyright on both a screen display and the code of the
program.  The other point of view (which the Lotus v. Paperback judge
accepted) is that a copyright registration applies to *any*
copyrightable aspect of the work.

For trade secrets, it's basically if you can find out about it
(without breaking any contracts or other illegal activity), you are
entitled to use the information without restriction.  I guess perhaps
it would be useful to list programs which require you to sign a
contract to get (a) binaries, (b) source.

Despite the fact that such a list would be by its nature incomplete, I
still can see some use in keeping a list of companies which have
asserted rights (by suing or writing letters asserting rights).