Some copyright guidelines for software to be made available through the Sigma project have been decided on by the Information technology Promotion Agency: although the Japanese copyright law was revised last year, rights with regard to modification and use of software are still not clearly defined, which creates problems particularly because pre-existing software is being used in the Sigma project, and there is the potential of a string of copyright claims from the original developer, the developer modifying the software for the Sigma environment and the manufacturer who ported the software; two definitions have now been arrived at, for object code operation and source code operation, and 20 different standard contracts are now being drawn up.
