Martin Goetz, recipient of the first software patent, logs off at 93 Martin Goetz, regarded by many as the "father of third-party software," has died at the age of 93. An inductee into the Mainframe Hall of Fame – an institution devoted to honoring individuals instrumental in IBM's 1960s mainframe success – Goetz was notable for receiving the first software patent, awarded in 1968, for his …
Why would copyright not be equally effective?
Copyrights and patents have very different purposes.
Copyright just allows the author of a work (or their estate) to decide who may copy it, and for what fee, for some defined time period which can be 70 years after the authors death. It exists to make sure that authors aren't deprived of income from their work. There's no actual requirement to publish it.
Patent protection was created because the only way the inventor of a new machine or process could prevent others from copying, modifying and making money from it was to keep it secret. That secrecy prevented people from understanding it and making improvements to it, at a time when lots of new technologies were starting to appear. In return for a much shorter period of protection (more like 20 years after the patent was granted) the author had full control over who the design was licensed to, but in return they were required to publish it so that peole could understand how it worked. The scheme was specifically designed to advance the state of the art, while allowing the inventor to make money from their invention for a while
Whether it's valid to permit software patents is a different issue.
These days most patents, software or otherwise, are used in horse-trading between businesses. Company "A" wants to use something patented by company "B", so they look for something they have which "B" wants, and cross-license.
A much bigger problem with patents, of all sorts, is that patent offices are far too free in granting nonsensical patents without proper analyis and assuming that the courts will sort it out. Inevitably that means the person or company with the deepest pockets has the advantage, which was not the intention. Don't shoot the inventor, fix the patent system.
Ach... all you haters... get off your high horse!!
There's a vast difference between "patents" and "Monetization"
Consider the humble shipping container - a "patented" concept [to create a standard], gifted freely..... and used almost everywhere.
Yes, there are people who use patents (and trademarks & copyrights) to make money.... shocker: humans have been trying to sell "The One True Way" for as long as humans have been alive!
I think in majority of cases software isn't the art form (copyrightable) many programmers would like to believe they produce.
Its more prosaically just a mechanism for getting a job done and might occasionally have novelty value (patentable).
My pity if you rely on either protection to make your way in the world.
That way leads to a committee of "artists" (read politicians' nephews) deciding whether your painting is ART, and thus whether it is copyrightable, or just work, and therefore not.
The French had the "Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture" for centuries. If you didn't have their imprimatur, you were extremely restricted in your art.
"Official" art is not a good idea.
Goetz said: "In August 1970, ADR settled its antitrust suit with IBM with an out-of-court settlement of $2 million. The struggle was worth it.
That's really all you need to know.
The vast majority of "pioneers" did whatever they're famed for, for the same reason. Take the money out of the equation and see how much they give a fuck.
Sure, they want to run a business like lots of other people.
But being shat on by bigger unrestrained monopolistic companies with can make that difficult.
Was software patenting the right way to go ? Probably not, but what other effective avenues were available ?
The patent world of the 60s is not the patent world of today.
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