Martin Goetz

Martin A. Goetz was a software industry pioneer best known for receiving the first U.S. patent issued for computer software. In 1968 he was granted a patent for a data-sorting algorithm developed at Applied Data Research (ADR), establishing a landmark precedent that helped legitimize software as intellectual property and as a product independent of hardware manufacturing.

Goetz spent much of his career at ADR, one of the earliest independent software companies, where he held senior roles and helped develop widely used products for IBM mainframes. He was an outspoken advocate for the idea that software should be unbundled from hardware—a concept adopted by IBM in 1969 and an important step in the birth of the modern software industry.

After ADR’s acquisition, Goetz founded Goetz Associates, a consultancy offering guidance on software business strategy, intellectual property, and technology planning. He continued to write and speak on the evolution of the software industry, software patents, and antitrust issues relating to computing.

Martin Goetz is remembered as one of the earliest voices insisting that software could be an independent commercial product, and his advocacy helped open the door for the thousands of software firms that followed.