Back in the IBM BIOS days, they were writing machine code. Basically a series of operation codes (ie, numbers). Two people trying to implement the same complex

Back in the IBM BIOS days, they were writing machine code. Basically a series of operation codes (ie, numbers). Two people trying to implement the same complex system were almost guaranteed to produce the same code for several components. A clean-room procedure offers a verifiable defense that the duplication was not a result of copying. Today we use much higher level languages so it’s trivial to write the same code a hundred different ways. I’m not sure a clean room is worth the effort other than to force the engineer to not be lazy and copy. All that said, there’s also copyright rules covering derivative works. I’m sure there’s plenty of precedent in literature to cover “copying without actually copying” but I wouldn’t know how that works.