Software rights : how patent law transformed software development in America / Gerardo Con Diaz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Con Díaz, Gerardo, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer software--United States--Patents--History.

Computer software.

Patent laws and legislation--History--United States.

Patent laws and legislation.

Computer software industry--Law and legislation--History.

Computer software industry.

Software protection--Law and legislation--United States--History.

Software protection.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (379 pages)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Code Made Tangible, 1945-1954

2. From Antitrust to Patent Law at IBM, 1950-1966

3. The Myth of the Non-Machine, 1964-1968

4. Antitrust Law and Software Sales, 1965-1971

5. Software Patents at the Courts, 1961-1973

6. Remaking Software Copyright, 1974-1981

7. Making Sense of Benson, 1976-1982

8. Hobbyists and Intellectual Property from Altair to Apple, 1975-1981

9. Cloned Computers and Microchip Protection, 1981-1984

10. Look, Feel, and Programming Freedom, 1984-1995

11. Patent Enforcement and Software Embodiment, 1986-1995

12. Software Rights for a New Millennium, 1993-2000

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

0-300-24932-2

OCLC:

1122454118