Martin Goetz.

[Anuj Dhawan]

Martin Goetz

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If there's a single person most responsible for creating the software industry as we know it, it's Martin Goetz. Co-founder of Applied Data Research. Martin A. Goetz (born April 22, 1930) was a pioneer in the development of the commercial software industry. He holds the first software patent, and was product manager of Autoflow from Applied Data Research (ADR), which is generally cited as the first commercial software application.

Goetz received the first software patent in 1968, and in 1969 ADR sued IBM for anti-competitive practices related to software, which contributed to IBM's "unbundling" in 1970--no longer including free software as part of the mainframe sale. Except, of course, for its operating systems.

In the early 1960s, the status of software as a standalone industry was unclear. Software was generally custom-developed for a single customer, bundled with hardware, or given away free. Goetz and ADR played a substantial role in defining software as a standalone product, and clarifying that it could be protected by intellectual property laws.

In 2007, Computerworld cited Goetz as an "Unsung Innovator" in the computer industry. In late 2009, Goetz wrote an editorial in the patent blog Patently-O advocating software patents. Goetz argues that there is no principled difference between software and hardware patents and that truly patent-able software innovations require just as much ingenuity and advancement as any other kind of patent-able subject matter.

[Disha Shetty]

This is an interesting read.

[Anuj Dhawan]

Glad you liked it!

[Abhishek Awasthi]

This entire Forum is quite interesting. It's nice to know the faces behind the scenes...