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First Software Patent Granted 28 Years Ago

by Terrence O'Brien on May 28, 2009 at 08:16 AM

First Software Patent Granted 28 Years Ago
As Wired reminded us on Tuesday, it was 28 years ago this week that the first ever patent on software was granted to Satya Pal Asija for 'Swift-Answer,' his software package that provided "full text, free-form, narrative, information input, storage and retrieval."

The app was actually created 40 years ago, in 1969, but it took six years and a law degree for Asija to successfully navigate the system and file his patent. Then, it took another seven years of court battles before, on May 26, 1981, patent number 4,270,182 was granted to Swift-Answer.

A software patent, unlike a copyright, protects the intellectual property, not only from direct copying and piracy, but also from would-be imitators, in the same way an inventor's physical creation would be protected. [From: Joystiq]

Tags: history, patent, software, swift-answer, top

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