Kahin says, "Never before has an industry in which
copyright was widely established suddenly been subjected to
patenting"[25] In fact, patent protection for software was established before
copyright protection. Diamond v. Diehr (1981)
preceded the two most important software copyright cases, Apple
Computer v. Franklin Computer Company (1982) and SAS
Institute Inc. v. S&H Computer Systems Inc. (1985).
Even today the case law on user interface copyrights is sparse.
Software, or "computer-related" patents were obtained
in the 1960s. Martin Goetz of Applied Data Research received U.S.
patents 3,380,029 in 1968 on a Sorting System, and 3,533,086 in
1970 on AutoFlow, an automatic flow charting program. (When IBM
started giving Roscoe, a flowcharting program, away free ,
Applied Data Research sued for antitrust and and, in 1969,
settled for about about $2 million in damages.) The recalculation
patent filed in 1970 was granted in 1983 (Last updated on 10/06/98) Intellectual Property Creators
Patents & Copyrights
Intellectual
Property Creators
www.ipcreators.org
101 First St., Suite 425
Los Altos, CA 94022
Voice: 650/948-8350
© Paul Heckel 1995-7