Overview

A new perspective on United States software development, seen through the patent battles that shaped our technological landscape   This first comprehensive history of software patenting explores how patent law made software development the powerful industry that it is today. Historian Gerardo Con Díaz reveals how patent law has transformed the ways computing firms make, own, and profit from software. He shows that securing patent protection for computer programs has been a central concern among computer developers since the 1950s and traces how patents and copyrights became inseparable from software development in the Internet age.   Software patents, he argues, facilitated the emergence of software as a product and a technology, enabled firms to challenge each other’s place in the computing industry, and expanded the range of creations for which American intellectual property law provides protection. Powerful market forces, aggressive litigation strategies, and new cultures of computing usage and development transformed software into one of the most controversial technologies ever to encounter the American patent system.

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Reviews

Matching the economy and elegance of a sublime early (patent worthy) computer program, Con Diaz's brilliant and accessible study of software intellectual property is unrivaled in IT legal history. -Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry Who says antitrust doesn't matter? In this spirited, authoritative, and well-crafted history, Con Diaz shows how lawmakers, lawyers, programmers, and entrepreneurs invented the legal principles that protect today's digital giants. -Richard R. John, author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications Con Diaz crucially reminds us that law is not external to the business and technological development of U.S. computing. He weaves patents, copyrights, and trade secrets into a lively history that speaks directly to contemporary intellectual property debates. -Kara W. Swanson, Northeastern University A brilliant, original history of the struggle to achieve copyright and patent protection for computer software, lucidly written, deeply knowledgeable, and compellingly attentive to the interplay of law, business, and innovation. -Daniel J. Kevles, Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University

A tremendous achievement that stands with some of the best literature on the history of computing and software, and the history of technology and patent law. -Jeffrey Yost, Director of the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota

Matching the economy and elegance of a sublime early (patent worthy) computer program, Con Diaz's brilliant and accessible study of software intellectual property is unrivaled in IT legal history. -Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry

Matching the economy and elegance of a sublime early (patent worthy) computer program, Con Diaz's brilliant and accessible study of software intellectual property is unrivaled in IT legal history. -Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry Who says antitrust doesn't matter? In this spirited, authoritative, and well-crafted history, Con Diaz shows how lawmakers, lawyers, programmers, and entrepreneurs invented the legal principles that protect today's digital giants. -Richard R. John, author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications

Matching the economy and elegance of a sublime early (patentworthy) computer program, Con Diaz's brilliant and accessible study of software intellectual property is unrivaled in IT legal history. -Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry Who says antitrust doesn't matter? In this spirited, authoritative, and well-crafted history, Con Diaz shows how lawmakers, lawyers, programmers, and entrepreneurs invented the legal principles that protect today's digital giants. -Richard R. John, author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications Con D&#0237az crucially reminds us that law is not external to the business and technological development of U.S. computing. He weaves patents, copyrights, and trade secrets into a lively history that speaks directly to contemporary intellectual property debates. -Kara W. Swanson, Northeastern University A brilliant, original history of the struggle to achieve copyright and patent protection for computer software, lucidly written, deeply knowledgeable, and compellingly attentive to the interplay of law, business, and innovation. -Daniel J. Kevles, Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University A highly readable account of how patent law and software shaped one another in the twentieth century. By bringing together technology, industry, and law, this book sets a new agenda for computer history. -Eden Medina, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Author Information

Gerardo Con Díaz is assistant professor of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis, and the editor in chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

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