Martin Goetz, father of third-party software, passes away

San Francisco: Martin Goetz, known as the ‘father of third-party software’ who wrote the first software patent in the US, has died at the age of 93. Nearly a decade after Goetz and his colleagues started a company called Applied Data Research in 1968, they received their patent for data-sorting software for mainframes, The New York Times reports.

Goetz was granted the patent after a three-year battle with the US Patent Office over whether the software could be patented. Goetz patented his own software so that IBM could not copy it and put it on their machines.

“By 1968, I had been involved in the debate about the patentability of software for about three years,” Goetz said in an interview. “I knew at some point the patent office would recognize it,” he said.

His success in securing patents led him to become a vocal champion of patenting software. Robin Feldman, a professor at the College of Law at the University of California, San Francisco, says in the NYT report, “The invention of the App Store and software owes much to Goetz’s vision, his scientific innovation and his perseverance.”

In April 1969, Applied Data Research filed an antitrust lawsuit against IBM, accusing them of illegally setting a single price for their equipment and software. That same year, IBM agreed to unbundling. According to reports, the suit was settled in August 1970.

In 1985, telecommunications company Ameritech acquired Applied Data Research for $215 million. Goetz became the company’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.

In early 1988, he moved up and became chief executive of the software company Sylology. He later became a consultant as well as an investor in software companies, the report said.

Goetz was inducted into the Mainframe Hall of Fame, which cited him as the “Father of Third-Party Software”. In 2007, Goetz was named by Computerworld as the computer industry’s ‘Unsung Innovator’.