Martin Goetz

Martin A. Goetz (April 22, 1930 – October 10, 2023) was an American software engineer and pioneer in the development of the commercial software industry. He held 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.

In the early 1960s, the status of software as a standalone industry was unclear. The 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. He was named the "Father of Third-Party Software" by mainframezone.com.

In late 2009, Goetz wrote an editorial in the patent blog Patently-O advocating software patents. Goetz argued 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 patentable subject matter. Provided by Wikipedia