A Brief History of Software Patents (And Why They’re Valid)

Today, there is a vigorous and sometimes caustic debate over whether computer software is a patentable invention. Unfortunately, these arguments are rife with confusion about both the technology and the law, and courts are proving to be equally confused. As opposed to continuing the entirely doctrinal and policy debate in the literature, this Essay fills a gap in the scholarship by detailing the historical evolution of computer software and showing how intellectual property (“IP”) law played a key role in its technological development. This historical account contributes to the debate in two ways. First, it reveals that opposition to IP protection for software is not new. There was vociferous opposition in the 1960s to extending copyright protection to software code, just as there is strident opposition today to extending patent protection to software programs. Second, and more important, it reveals why courts extended patent protection to software programs in the 1990s, which followed from the evolution of computer technology itself. Legal doctrines evolve in response to developments in new technology, and the patent system exemplifies this operating principle. The patent system secured to innovators the new technological inventions in the Industrial Revolution and does the same for innovators in today’s Digital Revolution. Understanding the history of computer software and its evolving protections under the IP laws confirms that software programs today are inventions that, if they are new, useful, nonobvious and properly disclosed in a patent application, are rightly eligible for patent protection.