Have you seen actual programs (not shell scripts) that do that? I've heard of code smells, but that's a programmer smell with there.

I think touch is a generic example, but not a practical one. The idea is that program A can launch program B, and you'd have to recursively search for the parent. But it's not easy to find which parent is the true owner, maybe an exception can be made for init but shells can't have that exception as they are sometimes the owner.

Couldn't you just record the creating process and all ancestors?

You're right. I can see anything like scripts getting difficult. It wouldn't work for all use cases.