Separation of Concerns for IP Protection in USD by asluk · Pull Request #107 · PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD-proposals

asluk · 2026-05-14T20:11:34Z

Description of Proposal

Summary

Document the IP protection requirements that arise when USD is used in cross-organization workflows -- manufacturing, data center infrastructure, M&E, aerospace -- and separate them into four distinct concerns with different threat models and different likely solutions.

Problem statement

"IP protection" is used as a single label for at least four separate things: protection against dissemination, ephemeral data and runtime protection, copyright and attribution, and provenance and compositional integrity. When they get lumped together, discussions stall because participants are effectively trying to solve different problems at the same time. This proposal provides a clear problem statement and separation of concerns.

Glossary

Protection through omission -- The approach of curating exports to include only what the recipient should see, rather than relying on runtime enforcement.
Tiered representations -- Multiple representations of the same asset curated for different audiences (full access, customer simulation, public/layout), distinct from LODs.
Living provenance -- Provenance that invalidates when the composition is changed, as opposed to a static origin stamp.
The recombination problem -- USD's composition model allows components from different validated assemblies to be rearranged into configurations never sanctioned by the original supplier.

Reference Links

Separation of Concerns for Identifiers -- Source identifiers as foundation for provenance and copyright tracking
Authorship Metadata -- Parallel work on authorship records; the same compositional dynamic appears on the authorship side
Revise Use of Layer Metadata -- Relevant to copyright metadata and customLayerData limitations
ArResolver -- Extension point for access-controlled resolution
Variable Expressions -- USD-native mechanism for package-and-deliver gating
C2PA -- Standard for signed provenance manifests, referenced as adjacent prior art

Details

The proposal frames IP protection as four independent concerns, each with different characteristics and likely solutions. It documents existing USD mechanisms (asset resolvers, variable expressions, composition arcs, customData), identifies what USD can address vs. what requires external systems vs. what requires guidance, and provides practical guidance on structuring USD assets for protectability. No changes to core USD are assumed. Where future USD enhancements might help, those are identified and scoped for potential follow-up proposals contingent on community discussion.

Risks

Scope creep into solution space (the proposal is a problem statement, not a solution proposal)
Incomplete industry coverage (currently weighted toward manufacturing and infrastructure)

Alternate solutions

N/A -- this is a problem-statement proposal, not a solution proposal.

Out of Scope

DRM and encryption schemes, specific access control implementations, cloud streaming and pixel-only delivery, and concrete schema proposals for copyright metadata or flatten-protection annotations. Each is identified as downstream work or as out of scope for USD entirely.

Link to Rendered Proposal

Supporting Materials

None at this time.

Contributing

I agree to and accept the Supplemental Terms.

Joint proposal with Stephen Prideaux-Ghee (PTC), Steve Blackwell (Vertiv), and Aaron Luk (NVIDIA). Establishes four distinct IP protection concerns (dissemination, ephemeral data, copyright, provenance), provides industry use cases, and frames guidance on asset structuring for protectability. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

- Rework phrasing to reduce AI-isms and diverge from identifiers proposal voice - Break walls of text into bullets and sub-bullets throughout - Add Media & Entertainment industry use case section (multi-vendor VFX, pre-release confidentiality, cross-studio collaboration) - Reference M&E alongside other industries in intro, motivation, and design principles - Link identifiers proposal to PR PixarAnimationStudios#105 instead of relative path - Fix line widths to ~75 chars - Drop NVIDIA platform vendor label, drop Omniverse mention Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Soften language throughout to avoid reading as proposed USD changes: - Table "USD role" column: point to Open Questions instead of naming solutions - Concern 3 (Copyright): add illustrative disclaimers on code blocks, hedge flatten/accumulate language - "What USD can address": replace "low-risk enhancement" with conditional framing, defer specifics to community discussion - Next steps: make follow-up proposals conditional on community input - Broaden privilege boundaries guidance to cover all external-layer arcs - Fix fact-check: `final` is not a current USD keyword - Replace "variant" with "approach" to avoid USD variant confusion Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

- Renderers need geometry, not policy: carrying IP privilege metadata compromises render performance and still cannot enforce protection - Note that customLayerData does not survive Flatten, citing the Revise Use of Layer Metadata proposal Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

- Reorder open questions by priority (scope first, streaming last) - Condense resolver precedent paragraph; note that OAuth/PAM/JAAS standardize auth rules while ArResolver intentionally does not - Unpack authorship traceability vs compositional provenance - Rename "Defense in depth" to "No single mechanism is sufficient" - Remove internal JIRA reference; reorder contributor credits Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Add factory planner requirement to hide existence of references (not just content), property-level protection as two distinct requirements (export control vs consumer visibility), operational data tiers as independent axis from geometry, vendor management cost of tiered delivery, lowest-privilege tier must serve a workflow, display watermarking prior art, view-dependent obfuscation prior art, and streaming rationale from mesh surface reconstruction risk. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Eliminate verbose "Existing mechanisms" section, replace with lightweight cross-reference. Collapse "Separation of concerns" subsections into table. Fold "Relationship to other proposals" inline. Compress two-personas lists, copyright code blocks, next steps. Merge principles 5+6. Remove redundant paragraph after four-concerns table and generic "Why now" point. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Contributors won't feed valuable IP into shared pools without confidence it's protected — making this the root driver behind all four concerns. Scoped to industrial USD; M&E noted separately. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Covers all 13 inline comments + summary review. - Glossary (M&E / PLM / DRM) - ArResolver caveats: usdcat, multi-vendor, composition impact - Streaming reframed as out-of-band; out of scope for USD - `final` -> `unflattenable`; unenforceability framing strengthened (open-data-access bullet, Presto `locked` reference, DRM-history closing) - C2PA reference + AuthorshipAPI cross-link in provenance - Variable Expressions as package-and-deliver alternative - Provenance: arbitrary modification, per-prim checksum scope, scenegraph markup as signature-scope complication - Open questions: resolver missing-credentials behavior, virality / aggregation as cross-proposal question Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:50:17Z

+
+## Concern 4: Provenance and compositional integrity
+
+Provenance -- tracking where content came from -- gets complicated in


It's not just where it comes from, but who created/edited it, when they did it, etc.

It may include authoring, ownership/copyright, etc.

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:52:03Z

+1. Reference both product C+D and product E+F.
+2. Extract component C from the first and component F from the second.
+3. Compose them into a new structure C+F.
+4. Save this as a new asset that looks like a valid product.


and it may well be a valid product - but not from the same producer as the originals. And that's OK.

well technically it isnt a valid product because they've taken my product and changed it and if i'm not allowing that (copyright), what they create will never be a valid product. clearly we need to get terminology right. we should chat.

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:53:42Z

+
+If product C+D carries a provenance marker indicating it is a validated
+configuration from vendor X:
+- Extracting C and composing it with F from a different assembly should


It doesn't break the existing provenance - but that the existing provenance may/does carry into the new asset. It depends on how "vendor X" define things - and they could setup the provenance to be only over the entire thing OR as a series of "ingredients" that can be used independantly.

fair point; that is assuming of course that there's aa mechanism to do that. interested to learn more about your stuff.

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:54:17Z

+- The new assembly C+F should not inherit the validated status of its
+  source components.
+
+This is "living" or "dynamic" provenance -- not a static stamp, but a


This is provenance. It's not any more living or dynamic than any other understanding of provenance.

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:55:23Z

+  components -- invalidates the signature. This is conceptually clean
+  but requires infrastructure for key management and signature
+  verification. The
+  [Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)](https://c2pa.org/)


And I (as chair of the C2PA's TWG) have a proposal for how to bring C2PA's Content Credentials into USD(Z)

lrosenthol · 2026-06-11T17:56:56Z

+  combined and whether the combination has been validated.
+- Copyright and provenance may benefit from overlapping mechanisms --
+  e.g., digital signatures that attest to both origin and integrity.
+- An honest limit: provenance signals are best understood as


We've done a lot of work at C2PA to allow these features - if you want them in your system...

asluk and others added 11 commits April 8, 2026 10:15

Add browser screenshot analogy to ephemeral data section

6e1048e

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Fix diagram alignment, sharpen flatten-protection open question

3f17199

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

github-project-automation Bot added this to OpenUSD Proposals Status May 14, 2026

asluk mentioned this pull request May 14, 2026

Separation of Concerns for IP Protection in USD asluk/OpenUSD-proposals#3

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jesschimein moved this to Todo in OpenUSD Proposals Status May 20, 2026

meshula mentioned this pull request Jun 2, 2026

Authorship Metadata #106

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jesschimein moved this from Todo to Draft in OpenUSD Proposals Status Jun 10, 2026

lrosenthol reviewed Jun 11, 2026

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Separation of Concerns for IP Protection in USD - #107

Separation of Concerns for IP Protection in USD#107
asluk wants to merge 11 commits into
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		## Concern 4: Provenance and compositional integrity

		Provenance -- tracking where content came from -- gets complicated in

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asluk commented May 14, 2026

Description of Proposal

Summary

Problem statement

Glossary

Reference Links

Details

Risks

Alternate solutions

Out of Scope

Supporting Materials

Contributing

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