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WHAT software patents? | 217 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Actually, I think it was FORTRAN II
Authored by: jesse on Wednesday, November 28 2012 @ 02:22 PM EST
And the desire to run the same program on different platforms.

Before that, the languages that existed were tied to a specific platform (at
least the model line).

The next one I believe was Algol, followed by COBOL.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

WHAT software patents?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 28 2012 @ 04:33 PM EST
Yep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_Data_Research

As I understand it (and history is always more
complicated...and Wikipedia sometimes less
accurate...)..but...(copied stuff follows)

Basically, ADR developed a useful program and patented it.
IBM wasn't wild about the development of a separate software
industry, copied the program, and gave it away for free.

First software patent

ADR received the first Patent issued for a computer program,
a sorting system, on April 23, 1968.[2] The program was
developed by Martin A. Goetz[3]
[edit]ADR IBM lawsuit

ADR instigated litigation in Federal Court against IBM [4]
with accusations that IBM was "retarding the growth of the
independent software industry" [4] and "monopolizing the
software industry", leading to IBM's famous unbundling of
software and services in 1969. In 1970, ADR and
Programmatics, a wholly owned subsidiary of ADR, received an
out-of-court settlement of $1.4 million from IBM. IBM also
agreed to serve as a supplier of Autoflow, which could mean
another $600,000 in revenues for ADR.[5]

--Erwin

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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