The rift between what computing professionals think the law of intellectual property rights in computer programs ought to be and what intellectual property professionals (mainly lawyers) think it ought to be is growing wider every day. At the moment, it appears that the intellectual property professionals are outmaneuvering the computing professionals by working toward establishing their vision of the proper rules on software intellectual property rights as “the law” before the computingprofessionals even know that the rules that will govern their conduct are being decided. While there are unquestionably pros and cons to the software patent and other intellectual property controversies, the unfortunate fact of current U.S. policy on intellectual property rights for such an important product as computer programs is that the policymaking seems largely to be occurring either behind closed doors or in courtrooms across the country in cases in which the court papers are filed under seal. This effectively precludes those whose work will be substantially affected by the resolution of these controversies from having any meaningful input into the process of shaping the law in a manner that would make sense to them. Exclusion of computing professionals from the policymaking process also means the opportunity to persuade them of the merits of proposals eventually adopted has been lost. This, in turn, may have serious consequences for the enforceability of the proposals if they become the law. This column will report on this rift by bringing readers up to date on some national and international developments in the intellectual property rights arena and by reporting the results of a survey on intellectual property rights conducted in August 1991 at the SIGGRAPH conference in Las Vegas. The SIGGRAPH survey results are much the same as the CHI ‘89 survey results reported in the May