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Patent helped managers, programmers and lawyers at young software firms feel as if they were forming an industry of their own

In 1968 Martin Goetz secured a patent for data-sorting mainframe software beginning the market for third-party software.

Dies aged 93 Univac mainframe programmer Martin Goetz who later received the first US. patent for software, died on 10 October. He was 93.  His d...

Martin Goetz, who secured the first U.S. software patent, has passed away at 93, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped the software industrys legal and commercial landscape.

In 1968, nearly a decade after he and several other partners started the company Applied Data Research, Martin Goetz received his patent, for data-sorting software for mainframes. It was major news in the industry: An article in Computerworld magazine bore the headline "First Patent Is Issued for Software, Full Implications Are Not Known."

In 1968, nearly a decade after he and several other partners started the company Applied Data Research, Goetz received his patent, for data-sorting software for mainframes.

Martin Goetz, who wrote the first software patent in the US and was known as the 'father of third-party software', has died at 93.In 1968, nearly a decade after Goetz and his partners started the company called Applied Data Research, he ...

Martin Goetz, who wrote the first software patent in the US and was known as the father of third-party software, has died at 93.

“I knew at some point in time the patent office would recognize” computer software, he said. It happened in 1968, helping to ignite the software market.

Goetz was awarded a patent for data-sorting software in 1968, after a three-year fight with the US Patent Office over whether software could even be patented. The New York Times writes that the company he co-founded, Applied Data Research, filed an antitrust suit IBM in 1969 over its bundled hardware and software. IBM agreed to unbundle, but ADR didn’t let up.