Martin Goetz, is the Man who was awarded the first patent on a piece of software in April 1968, for a method of sorting data. In 1968, Martin Goetz received the first ever software patent, for an "improved data sorting algorithm". Little did he know that he'd set a precedent which would, over time, turn into a legal shit storm.
Martin A. Goetz was born on April 22, 1930 was a pioneer in the development of the commercial software industry. He holds the first software patent, and was product manager of Autoflow from Applied Data Research (ADR), which is generally cited as the first commercial software application