Scope & Legal Positioning

TrackForge certification is a process-fidelity and evidence-snapshot attestation. It records that a defined methodology was applied to a frozen evidence snapshot and produced the stated rating event at the stated time.

It is not a legal opinion, title guarantee, or promise that no future contradictory evidence can emerge.

What TrackForge Certifies

Each production rating certificate identifies:

• The rated subject: catalogue, track, or both.
• The AAA-D rating.
• The methodology version and methodology hash.
• The taxonomy version and workflow version.
• The declared jurisdictional scope.
• The snapshot time and run ID.
• Evidence packet hash or rating input hash.
• Merkle root and OpenTimestamps proof state.

The certificate asserts that the rating event was produced under that contract. It does not ask the reader to trust a mutable web page or an undocumented scoring process.

Current Direct Jurisdictional Scope

The current direct certification scope is United Kingdom and United States registration, repertoire, and revenue pathways.

This means TrackForge may assess, where evidence is available and the workflow requires it:

• UK composition pathways including PRS/MCPS-related evidence.
• PRS/SearchWorks WACD agreement binding, including whether works are explicitly tied to client agreements rather than relying on inferred or assumed claim routes.
• Authoritative ISWC coverage and conflicts where they affect work identity or registration resolution.
• US composition pathways including MLC and PRO-related evidence.
• UK and US neighbouring-rights diagnostics where they affect the declared workflow.
• Cross-border consequences of UK/US defects.

The current certificate does not directly certify French, German, Japanese, or other non-UK/US society registration state. Future society-specific expansion belongs in roadmap or future methodology-version language until it is implemented, versioned, and anchored.

What TrackForge Does Not Certify

TrackForge certification does not assert:

1. Legal ownership - It does not establish ownership of copyright, neighbouring rights, or any other intellectual property right.
2. Definitive writer splits - It does not state that shares are legally settled or dispute-free.
3. Global society coverage - It does not claim direct validation of every society outside the declared scope.
4. Future absence of contradictions - It does not guarantee that later evidence, transfers, or corrections will not change the state.
5. Upstream database perfection - It does not warrant that external source databases are complete or error-free.
6. Legal advice - It is not a substitute for formal legal due diligence.

Process Fidelity

The legal value of a TrackForge certificate is that it is repeatable and independently verifiable. A lawyer or auditor can inspect the methodology artefact, recompute hashes, verify the Merkle proof, and check the OpenTimestamps proof state.

If a later remediation fixes a leakage condition, the correct output is a later rating event. The earlier certificate remains a true record of the earlier snapshot.

Reliance Posture

Reliance should always be tied to:

• The methodology version.
• The declared scope.
• The proof state.
• Whether the rating is production-certified, pending anchoring, local-only, or withheld.

Pending means pending. Confirmed means confirmed. A certificate should not blur those states.