‘Software is or may be viewed as a new kind of property as, in effect, intangible machinery’.Footnote ¹

Introduction

In August 1967 Morton Jacobs, who was patent counsel for the Princeton-based software company Applied Data Research, wrote a letter to the Vice President and General Counsel of IBM, Burke Marshall, complaining about the way IBM was distributing its computer programs. Specifically, Jacobs complained that in giving customers who leased or bought IBM 360 computers a free copy of their Flowcharter program (which automatically developed flowcharts that set out the logic of a computer program) that IBM was destroying Applied Data Research’s market for its Autoflow program (which also automatically developed flowcharts).Footnote ² Jacobs added that in violation of antitrust laws and the law of unfair competition, IBM’s actions would destroy his ‘client’s market for its Autoflow systems and destroy the property value of his clients software system by setting a “free” price as its market value, and make it impossible for our client to compete with IBM in the sale of such systems, all to the great detriment and injury of our client’.Footnote ³

The main concern for Applied Data Research was that IBM distributed its Flowcharter program ‘in the same way it distributed other software’ whereby the software was ‘given away “free” to IBM customers and “tied-in” to the sale of IBM/360 computers’. Following a response from Marshall denying liability and saying that IBM would need to wait for Applied Data Research’s patent (then pending) to issue on Autoflow, Jacobs responded saying that there ‘can be no question that IBM’s tie-in of its Flowcharter program to sales of the IBM 360 machines has misled potential customers of Applied Data Research’s Autoflow into thinking that the IBM Flowcharter program is free’. On the basis that this ‘illegal and anticompetitive practice by IBM has seriously injured [Applied Data Research’s] sales’, Jacob warned that unless steps were taken to correct these actions in violation of the antitrust laws Applied Data Research would be compelled to seek appropriate legal and enforcement remedies’.Footnote ⁴

Applied Data Research followed up on its threat in April 1969 when it brought an antitrust action against IBM arguing that in giving its Flowcharter programs away for free that IBM had uncompetitively impeded the independent development of software.Footnote ⁵ Along with similar antitrust actions by Programmatics (a subsidiary of Applied Data Research), Control Data Corporation, and Data Processing Financial General Corporation, the Department of Justice also filed an antitrust action against IBM in 1969 arguing that by giving away software services for free and by bundling software with related equipment hardware under a single pricing plan (without detailing the price of the elements), IBM had engaged in anticompetitive practices that restrained actual or potential competitors from entering the relevant markets.Footnote ⁶

In June 1969, IBM announced that from January 1, 1970, it would unbundle its software and hardware and charge separate prices for programming services and software packages. That is, it would separately price and sell the software it had previously bundled with its computers and sold at a single price. True to its word, in 1970 IBM not only began to sell hardware and software separately, it also began to charge a monthly fee for the use of its software or as IBM preferred, its ‘program products’.

IBM’s unbundling of hardware and software was part of a wide ranging set of changes that occurred in the computing industry in the 1960s and 1970s.Footnote ⁷ As the President of Programming Sciences Corporation, Albert M. Loring, said at the time, IBM’s announcement ‘has, in effect, given birth to the software industry as an Industry’.Footnote ⁸ As we will see, these changes also triggered a wide-ranging debate about the applicability of patent protection for the products of this emerging new industry.

At first blush, it may appear that IBM’s decision to unbundle its (intangible) software from its (tangible) hardware represents a dematerialisation of patentable subject matter: a change from the situation where the subject matter consisted of a tangible machine that embodied intangible software to a situation where there were now two potential forms of subject matter – the tangible computer hardware and the intangible instructions used to control a computer (the program). Building upon the idea that the computer program represented a turning point in the ‘long struggle for information to emancipate itself from the shackles of materiality’,Footnote ⁹ there is a sense in which the unbundling of hardware and software marks yet another situation where patentable subject matter was dematerialised.

While IBM’s decision to unbundle its software set in play a process that ultimately led to the dematerialisation of computer-related subject matter, this did not occur until the end of the twentieth century. This is because while in the 1970s software and hardware may have been unbundled from a commercial and marketing perspective, they remained technologically intertwined.Footnote ¹⁰ As we will see, following the decision to accept a technological reading of the subject matter, computer-related inventions in patent law retained a physical form. This remained the case for the remainder of the twentieth century.

To explore the role that materiality played in patent law’s interaction with computer-related subject matter, how the law ultimately dealt with an unbundled dematerialised subject matter, and the role that computer science and the computer industry more generally played in these processes, this and the following two chapters explore patent law in the United States from the 1960s through to the early part of the twenty-first century. After looking at how software was created and consumed in the 1960s and as this changed how it gave rise to questions about the role intellectual property might play in the emerging software industry, I look at the contrasting ways that patentable subject matter was seen within the information technology industry more broadly. In Chapter 6, I turn to look at the problems patent law experienced in the 1960s and 1970s in attempting to reconcile the conflicting views within the industry about what the subject matter was and how it should be interpreted. In Chapter 7, I show how in the 1980s patent law came to view computer-related subject matter through the lens of ‘abstractness’ and the role that materiality played in determining the fate of that subject matter in this context. I also look at how as a result of changes in technology, patent law gradually shifted away from the materiality of the subject matter to look at its ‘specificity’ and how in so doing the subject matter was dematerialised.

Software in the 1960s

Today, software is typically thought of as a pre-packaged consumer product that contains the instructions or code that controls computers. As software historians have shown, this was not always the case. ‘Historically speaking … software was not something that was purchased off-the-shelf, nor was it a single application or product. Rather it was a bundle of systems, services and support’.Footnote ¹¹ Indeed, it was not until the late 1960s that software came to be treated as a product and ‘even then software as code represented only a small component of a larger software system of services and support’.Footnote ¹² While there were exceptions, in the 1960s there were no stand-alone companies specializing in the creation and sale of software products: there was no organized and discrete software industry to speak of, or at least as we understand it today.

In this environment, users tended to obtain their software in one of four ways. In some situations, corporate programming staff would write the software in-house. While manufacturers provided customer support and training, users often developed their own custom written programs. Another important source of software in the 1960s were the user groups that had been established to facilitate the sharing of programs, algorithms, and associated information. By 1960, around 20 different user groups exchanged programs for free.Footnote ¹³ Interestingly, the user groups were actively promoted and supported by the hardware manufacturers. For example, in order to alleviate the expense of programming that occurred when IBM replaced the 701 computer with the 704 model in 1954,Footnote ¹⁴ IBM formed SHARE (Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort) to exchange programs amongst members (over 300 programs were shared) and to ‘serve as a conduit between users and IBM’s future development in hardware and programming’. The success of these early user groups encouraged the development of similar groups by IBM, other manufacturers, and industry bodies such as the American Bankers Association (who set up a ‘Swap Room’ at their annual conference to facilitate the exchange of computer programs).Footnote ¹⁵

Another important source of software in the 1960s were the programming service (or custom programming) companies who produced custom written software for users on a fee basis. Typically, these software contractors wrote bespoke programs for corporate and government customers.Footnote ¹⁶ Often the programs were very expensive ($1 million not being uncommonFootnote ¹⁷) and specifically written for particular organizations. As most of the sales occurred through personal contacts of staff or were in response to requests for custom software,Footnote ¹⁸ software contractors often had close working relationships with their customers.

The computer manufacturers who provided software free of charge to customers who bought hardware from them were another important source of software in the 1960s.Footnote ¹⁹ While the software packages were often costly to produce – figures spanned from a million dollars through to the $50 to $60 million IBM reportedly invested in its IBM/360 software – nonetheless, hardware manufacturers bundled the cost of the software into the cost of the hardware.Footnote ²⁰ At the time, there was no thought of recovering the cost of developing software by selling or leasing it separately.Footnote ²¹ Instead, in an environment where programs were distributed freely as an inducement to purchase hardware, software development was often seen as a marketing cost. In other situations the marketing and sale of software were presented as the selling of services (which, it was hoped, would take any illegal tie-ins outside the scope of antitrust laws).Footnote ²² Either way, software was bundled with the hardware and given away for free as part of the overall package that was provided to customers.

The manner in which software was created, exchanged, and consumed during the 1960s had an impact on how software was valued.Footnote ²³ It also had an impact on what was expected or demanded of the law. In relation to the software that was obtained for free from computer manufacturers or user groups, there was no need or interest in legal protection. To the extent that software was seen as a proprietary object, there was also little call for legal protection. This was because the close personal relationships that existed between software contractors and the companies they created software for minimized the need for legal or extra-legal means to control the reproduction or imitation of software. To the extent that there was a concern with software and how it circulated, the focus was on the body of the programmer rather that the product of their labour (the software). At a time when the major assets of software service companies would ‘go down in the elevator every night’,Footnote ²⁴ the primary concern was the pirating of programmers (or ‘body snatching’Footnote ²⁵) by competing firms and customersFootnote ²⁶ rather than the copying or piracy of software. This was reflected in the fact that a key legal concern of the information technology industry at the time was the role that the law could play in restricting the mobility of workers via employment contracts, restraint of trade, non-compete contract clauses, and confidentiality agreements. In reflection of this, most of the legal disputes at the time were a result of clients hiring staff from professional services companies in violation of non-hiring clauses.Footnote ²⁷

Over the course of the 1960s, a number of changes took place that gradually and haphazardly undermined this pre-modern regime. For my purpose, one of the most important developments was the gradual emergence of a new type of software artifact: the software product. Software products were standardised off-the-shelf programs that were sold separately, some in the hundreds, a few in the thousands, typically for between $5,000 and $100,000.Footnote ²⁸ Software products were discrete commercial objects that could be used without modification by a large number of contractors with little or no customization.Footnote ²⁹ While Applied Data Research’s Autoflow (1965) and Informatics Mark IV (1967) are often considered the earliest and most influential software products, by 1967 the number of proprietary programs on the market had increased to over a 100, with sales of about $4 million.Footnote ³⁰ From a small number of companies at the beginning of the 1960s, there were reported to be over 3,000 independent software and service companies by 1968.Footnote ³¹ As a result, by the end of the 1960s the term ‘software-industry’ had taken on its present day meaning ‘signifying commercial organizations engaged in the production of programming artefacts’.Footnote ³²

There were a number of factors that prompted the emergence of the software products industry in the later part of the 1960s. One important factor was the proliferation and growing capabilities of computers. The rapid increase in the number of computers in the United States – estimated at 4,000 in 1960, 21,600 in 1965, and 48,500 in 1970Footnote ³³ – created a number of software-related problems. One of which was that the software contractors who wrote bespoke programs for corporate and government customers were unable to keep up with the growing demand for custom-built software: simply put, computers were growing faster than programmers. This led to a concern about the shortage of software applications and programmers. These problems were compounded by the fact that the sharing organizations who supplied free software were criticized for being too hardware focused and because they did not share important and costly programs.Footnote ³⁴ There was also a concern about the quality of the programs being created. Another problem was that many computer users lacked the in-house expertise to develop or customise software. And for those organizations that had the expertise to write software themselves, there were concerns about the cost of in-house production: it was often difficult to predict in advance how long it would take and how much it would cost to develop software. Pre-packaged software that was sold off the shelf at a fixed price helped to satisfy many of these concerns.

Another important factor that facilitated the emergence of the software products industry in the 1960s was the development of the common technical standards that interoperable pre-packaged objects require. One of the factors that had prevented the development of pre-packaged software in the early 1960s was the diversity of different standards then in use. For example, in 1960 IBM had at least seven different software incompatible computer architectures, each of which required unique operating systems and utilities. The situation changed in the mid-1960s, however, when IBM introduced the 360 family of computers. One of the features of the new 360 system, which consisted of fourteen different computers, many of which sold in large numbers, was that all of the computers used the same architecture. In so doing, IBM created a base-standard and a technical platform for the industry as a whole. As one independent software producer said, the establishment of ‘a single architectural standard’ facilitated by the 360 family of computers ‘gave us a great customer base to sell to’.Footnote ³⁵

Yet another factor that played a role in the development of the software products market was the antitrust actions that were brought against IBM by the US Department of Justice and Applied Data Research. While there may be questions about the reasons for the unbundling, there is little doubt that it had a substantial impact on the nascent computing industry. One of the consequences of the unbundling that took place in the early 1970s was that software was marketed and sold separately from hardware. By helping to ‘condition customers to pay for software’ and by challenging the idea that software was a free good, the decision by IBM and other hardware companies to stop giving software away for free helped to create ‘a vibrant market for software products, which previously had been merely embryonic. It was a turning point for the industry’.Footnote ³⁶ As well as benefiting existing computer service and software firms such as Applied Data Research and Informatics, who saw a dramatic increase in sales after IBM announced that it would market and sell hardware and programs separately,Footnote ³⁷ the unbundling of software also acted as a catalyst for new organisations to enter into the software products market. In this sense, unbundling was a ‘crucial inflection point’ in the development of the software products industry.Footnote ³⁸

The emergence of the software product industry not only saw a change in the way software was created, distributed, and used, it also changed the way people thought about software. For my purposes, the most important consequence of the development of the software product industry was that it changed what was expected or demanded of the law. While there had previously been little or no need for intellectual property protection, suddenly intellectual property was potentially relevant. Indeed, one of the consequences of the growth in the software product market was that it triggered a debate about the potential role that intellectual property might play in relation to software-related subject matter.

Intellectual Property Protection for the Software Products Industry

Early interest in the potential application of intellectual property to protect software was driven by two groups. The first were the financial institutions who loaned money to software companies. One of the concerns that banks and other financial institutions had when loaning money to software product companies was that many of the new start-up companies had very few assets other than the software that they were creating. The problem here was that the banks were uncomfortable loaning money purely on the basis of intangible assets. One of the strategies that the banks adopted to deal with this problem was to demand that software companies take out intellectual property protection over their software. This allowed the banks to point to the copyright or patent registration as if it was a tangible manifestation of the ephemeral software. The problems banks had with software’s intangibility and the way that they dealt with this is captured in the comments of an industry representative about his experience in obtaining a loan from a bank at the time. As he said, the bank was ‘alarmed that the principal software of the company had not been registered in the Copyright Office’. To remedy this, as a condition of the loan the bank insisted that the ‘company file all of those pieces of software in the Copyright Office so that they would have a lien on a registered copyright’.Footnote ³⁹

The second group agitating for protection were lawyers. For some lawyers, ensuring that software products were protected was an integral part of what it meant to be a lawyer. As Irving Kayton said when opening a software law conference at George Washington University in 1968: ‘lawyers must protect their client’s property rights or they will not have clients or, indeed, practice law’.Footnote ⁴⁰ For other lawyers, legal protection was an integral part of what it meant for something to be a product. As one legal commentator noted, the ‘one essential ingredient of the package concept [or software product] is a means of protecting the program: for without such protection, it ceases to be a commodity’.Footnote ⁴¹ For most lawyers, however, the primary reason why legal protection was needed was to prevent software from being pirated. Here, lawyers either worked on first principals – arguing that no one would invest in software unless it was protectedFootnote ⁴² – or cited other lawyers about the manifest need for protection. Whatever the justification, the message was clear: without protection, software was vulnerable; ‘the degree of competition and inevitably the quality of the end product, will be diminished’.Footnote ⁴³

One of the things that underpinned the various pleas for legal protection for software was a belief that software piracy was a problem that needed to be solved. In a sense it was presumed that the development of software products as discrete commercial objects necessarily created a need for intellectual property protection. While the separation of intellectual outputs from the people who generate them often creates a need for intellectual property protection, this is not necessarily the case (as lawyers at the time seemed to presume). Ultimately, the question of whether intellectual property protection is needed in a given situation depends on a range of factors from how easy it is to reproduce or copy the creative output in question and whether copying is seen as a problem, to whether other means are available to prevent unwanted copying or imitation. It was the later point that is relevant here. This is because while the emergence of software products did shift the focus of attention away from programmers towards the products of their labour, it did not (immediately) affect the relationships that existed between creators/producers and users/consumers of software. As had been the case with software contractors who had built strong relationships with their customers, software product firms also managed to establish close relationships with the users of their software. These relationships were reinforced by the pre-and after-sale support (including product customization, user training, and regular updates) that software products firms regularly provided to customers.Footnote ⁴⁴ This was particularly the case with application software companies, who were more service companies than packaged goods companies and therefore worked closely with customers.Footnote ⁴⁵ One of the consequences of this was that the use/misuse of software was largely controlled through personal ties and business-to-business relationships. As a software industry representative explained, the data processing managers who the software companies dealt with were ‘not going to cheat because he could end up losing his job. So there was very little thievery’.Footnote ⁴⁶

The upshot of this is that despite the suggestions by lawyers at the time, there was little need for legal protection (at least to prevent piracy). Indeed, one of the things that software industry representatives looking back on the 1960s have stressed is that, in spite of what the lawyers may have suggested, piracy or as it was known at the time, thievery was not a problem. These sentiments were captured in the comment by the former president of the software products group at Dun & Bradstreet, Leo Keet, when he said:

While there may have been very little unauthorized use of programs by corporationsFootnote ⁴⁸ and even less by consumers,Footnote ⁴⁹ this does not mean that intellectual property protection was not needed. One of the areas where this was the case was to protect software product firms from the predatory behaviour of the large hardware firms, particularly IBM. Rather than needing to prevent end-user piracy of software, software product firms needed legal protection to enable them to compete against hardware manufacturers and thus to get a share of the rapidly expanding market. The concern here was that without protection, software product firms were ‘unable to compete with machine manufacturers who would be able to copy the programs with impunity and distribute them “free” with their machines’.Footnote ⁵⁰

One of the most vocal proponents of intellectual property protection for software was Martin Goetz, president and founder of Applied Data Research.Footnote ⁵¹ As we saw earlier, one of the earliest and most successful software products was Applied Data Research’s Autoflow software program, which was designed to produce program flowcharts automatically. Applied Data Research, who had invested over US$4 million in software systems,Footnote ⁵² believed that one of the reasons for the low sales of its Autoflow software was because IBM had begun to offer for free a program called Flowcharter that also generated flowcharts automatically. As Goetz complained, the ‘IBM Flowcharter became the major reason for a delayed or lost Autoflow sale. Our prospects went to IBM and asked for improvements to free IBM programs and it was widely believed IBM would develop a similar type of program and provide it to their customers for free’.Footnote ⁵³ In response Goetz not only brought an antitrust action against IBM, he also joined with many others to argue that the only way that smaller software firms could protect themselves against the predatory behaviour of large hardware manufacturers was to ensure that software was given some type of legal protection.

Irrespective of whatever doubts there might be about whether legal protection was needed at the time, there is no doubt that there was a growing interest across the 1960s in the potential role that intellectual property might play in protecting software, an interest that was heightened by changes in labour law that made it increasingly difficult to control the movement of employees.Footnote ⁵⁴ While the first copyright registration for software was granted in 1964,Footnote ⁵⁵ there was little industry interest in using copyright to protect software-related innovations.Footnote ⁵⁶ (There was even less interest in trade secret protection, which was thought to provide ineffective protection).Footnote ⁵⁷ While the hardware manufacturer’s interest in using copyright increased over time, independent software companies consistently showed little interest in using copyright to protect software. There were a number of reasons for this, including uncertainty about whether the registration of software would be upheld by the courts, the limited protection that was available if software was in fact protectable (given that it only protected the expression of programs), and uncertainty about how software should be represented for the purposes of registration. These problems were compounded by the fact that the Copyright Office (initially) did not accept object code for the purposes of registration. Instead, applicants had to submit source code and provide the full scope of the program (this was later changed so that applicants were only required to file ‘pieces of the program’Footnote ⁵⁸).

Unsatisfied with the protection offered by copyright and trade secrecy, it was believed that patents offered the only viable mode of protection for software. In arguing for patent protection, a number of familiar arguments were rehearsed. In particular, it was argued that patent protection would stimulate investment in innovation, promote the continued creation and circulation of software, overcome the growing shortage of programmers, and help to counter the culture of secrecy that the business environment encouraged. In response to the argument that protection was not needed and that software should continue to be given away for free, the proponents of patent protection cast doubts over the quality of the software that was shared at no cost. They also suggested that the free exchange programs only provided access to less important programs and that they did not include the valuable programs that might help competitors (such as multi-million-dollar airline reservation programs).Footnote ⁵⁹

Interestingly, the push for patent protection was also closely tied up with a desire to change how people thought about software which, in turn, was tied up with the professionalisation of the emerging industry. One of the problems at the time was that software was looked down on as a ‘second-class citizen’; something that was attributed to the fact that software ‘started out being a free service in the public domain’. Here, patenting was seen as a means ‘for elevating the view of what software was. It shouldn’t be free, it should be patentable’.Footnote ⁶⁰ As Goetz explained, ‘really … what we were trying to do’ in seeking to patent software ‘was to get stature’ …. ‘Every other industry seemed to have patent protection but here was an industry where you couldn’t get patent protection.’Footnote ⁶¹ Patenting was also seen as a means of enhancing the reputation of the firms that produced software. It was suggested, for example, that Bell Laboratories’ support for software patent protection was motivated by a desire for more public recognition in the programming area. The rational here was that if Bell’s ‘patents appears on programs that find wide use, [Bell] would become known as a source of programming excellence’.Footnote ⁶²

The push for patent protection for software was met with a hostile response from a range of parties. Somewhat surprisingly this included the Patent Office (who we would now expect to champion patent protection) and IBM (who for many years were reported to have ‘the most patents of any company in the US, or in the world’, but were against the patenting of softwareFootnote ⁶³). A number of arguments were made against patent protection for software. These ranged from general complaints that patent protection would stifle innovation and be counterproductive to the industry’s growth and development to more specific concerns about the ability of the Patent Office to cope administratively with software patenting. In reflection of the close connection that existed between software and hardware, it was also suggested that if patents were granted over software, it would create problems for computer users who, given the intangible nature of software, would not know whether they were infringing someone else’s patent.Footnote ⁶⁴ In this sense, it was argued that patent protection on programs would restrict the ability of someone purchasing a computer from using the instructions built into it.Footnote ⁶⁵ It was also argued, somewhat ironically, that patent protection was leading to more restrictive information handling practices by users and software companies. In particular, it was said that ‘certain professional journals have now taken the position that they will no longer publish allegedly novel algorithms if the person who claims them claims patent protection’.Footnote ⁶⁶ The opponents of patent protection also cautioned against changing something that they believed was already working well, indeed so well that it was ‘difficult to conceive how the field could grow faster’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Specifically it was said that as the rapid growth and innovation in software development that had taken place across the 1960s had occurred in an ‘atmosphere of free and open exchange of computer program ideas’ that protection was simply not needed.Footnote ⁶⁸ In light of this it was suggested that the best strategy was to continue to give software away for free.Footnote ⁶⁹

For the most part, the arguments for and against the patenting of software in the 1960s and 1970s are familiar; they have been repeated in one form or another for a range of different types of subject matter over time. The situation is less familiar, however, when we shift to look at the contrasting ways software was perceived within the information technology industry and what this meant for the law.

The ‘Contested Ontologies of Software’

While some of the older classes of patentable subject matter such as kaleidoscopes, steam engines, or dyes may now seem odd or quaint, it is relatively easy to compile a list of the different types of subject matter that have been presented to the law for evaluation over the years: recent examples include synthetic biology, AI-generated inventions, nanotechnology, and genes. Although with hindsight it may be relatively easy to identify the subject matter that was under consideration at a particular point of time, when new forms of subject matter are first presented to the law for scrutiny, there is often confusion about what the subject matter should be called, what its defining features are, and how it compares to other types of subject matter. Given that would-be classes of potential subject matter are almost by definition novel, this is not surprising. What is more surprising, however, is that in some situations the law has found it difficult to determine what the subject matter in question is. This was and remains the case with software-related inventions.

One of the reasons why there were so many problems associated with the patenting of software is because as Nathan Ensmenger said, software is quintessentially a heterogeneous technology: meaning that software is ‘inextricably linked to a larger social-technical system that includes machines (computers and their associated peripherals), people (users, designers and developers), and processes (the corporate payroll system, for example)’.Footnote ⁷⁰ As would-be subject matter, software’s heterogeneity presented problems for the law. The reason for this is that when determining the standing of a class of potential subject matter, patent law cannot and does not embrace an open-ended view of techno-scientific objects. Instead, when determining the standing of a class of subject matter, patent law needs to reduce the open-ended, fluid, and heterogeneous technology into something that is both closed, demarcated, and predictable and, at the same time, flexible enough to accommodate variations across the class of subject matter as well as changes that occur in the subject matter over time.

There were a number of reasons why patent law found software-related subject matter problematic. One reason for this was that software was defined negatively as those computer-related things that were not hardware. Indeed, in the 1959 article where the term was first used, John Turkey referred to software as those elements of a typical computer installation that were not ‘tubes, transistors, wires, tapes and the like’.Footnote ⁷¹ The difficulty of defining something that was already defined in opposition to what it was not helped to contribute to software’s ‘widespread, ill-defined use’.Footnote ⁷² The difficulties that arose in ascertaining the contours of the subject matter were compounded by software’s intangibility or immaterialityFootnote ⁷³ which meant, amongst other things, that there were no obvious traces or markers that could be relied upon to demarcate the boundaries of the subject matter.

While these factors were important, but often not in the way that we might first think, perhaps the most important reason why the law experienced so many problems in determining the ambit of software-related subject matter was because there was a fundamental disagreement within the nascent information technology industry about the way that the subject matter should be approached. This is important because as the history of patent law shows techno-scientific communities have not only consistently provided the law with potential new candidates for protection, they have also provided the means to allow the law to describe, demarcate, and identify that new subject matter. The presentation of new types of subject matter for legal scrutiny, whether organic chemicals, new plants, or mechanical innovations, has typically been accompanied by a shared understanding of what the subject matter is amongst the scientific and technical communities that generated it. What is so interesting about patent law’s engagement with software-related subject matter is that this was not the case.

While there was an expectation (or hope) that the information technology community would help the law in dealing with the nascent subject matter, this did not occur. In part, this was because there were two contrasting ways of thinking about software-related subject matter that coexisted at the time: what Gerardo Con Diaz called the ‘contested ontologies of software’.Footnote ⁷⁴ While there was agreement that the fate of software turned on ‘technological facts’,Footnote ⁷⁵ the parties were largely talking at cross purposes. This is because hardware manufacturers and software product companies did not agree on what the subject matter should be, let alone how it should be construed: they had very different understandings both about what the subject matter was and also about how it was to be interpreted. In particular, while hardware manufactures and their supporters argued that the debate should be about the patenting of computer programs, software companies argued that the debate should be about the patenting of programmed or special purpose computers as machines.

For hardware manufacturers, who were largely happy with the legal status quo, software-related subject matter was presented in such a way that it would not be patentable.Footnote ⁷⁶ This was done by arguing that discussions about patentable subject matter should be limited to discussions about whether computer programs were patent eligible. In this context, programs were presented as ‘nothing more than a set of instructions to a computer as to how it should manipulate information and data’.Footnote ⁷⁷ Specifically, programs were presented as flat, inert, two dimensional descriptions of a process that ‘specifies, in greater or lesser detail, the manner in which something may be implemented.Footnote ⁷⁸ In this sense, it was argued that computer programs were essentially immaterial creations that had a ‘certain ephemeral … non-physical or non-machine character’.Footnote ⁷⁹ Importantly, the descriptive character of computer programs remained ‘the same whether the language used is binary, mnemonic assembly language or even higher level languages. It also remains the same regardless of the recording media, whether it be paper, punched cards, magnetic tape or even the internal magnetic cores of a computer memory. In all of these cases, the program continues to be explicative, that is, descriptive’.Footnote ⁸⁰

By limiting the subject matter to computer programs and by presenting computer programs as inert two-dimensional descriptions of processes, hardware manufacturers were able to argue that computer programs were non-patentable mental processes. Specifically, it allowed them to suggest that a program, like a punched paper piano roll, was ‘nothing more than a set of instructions for the machine (i.e., computer or piano) automatically to implement the mental processes or steps contained in the algorithm or musical composition. Such creativity as exists lies solely in the development of the algorithm or musical composition and any patent issuing thereon would necessarily be grounded on the ideas or mental steps involved’.Footnote ⁸¹ By limiting the subject matter to static two-dimensional programs that merely specified the manner in which something could be implemented, hardware manufacturers were able to argue that a program was ‘no more the subject matter of patent application than is the schematic diagram of an electrical circuit’.Footnote ⁸² While the subject matter here had a technical dimension, it primarily reflected the idea of the program as a commercial commodity. It was also an object protected by copyright but not by patents.Footnote ⁸³

While hardware companies argued that the question to be asked was whether computer programs were patentable subject matter, software companies such as Applied Data Research argued that discussions about patentable subject matter should focus on computer-related subject matter as machines. As Morton Jacob said, a ‘computing machine is clearly a “machine” within the statutory classes of 35 USC 101’.Footnote ⁸⁴ ‘Computer programs are parts of such machines, in fact, they are control mechanisms for the computer: as such, they are “machine” devices or an article of manufacture within the terms of 35 USC 101.’ On this basis Jacob said: ‘Once we recognize that the subject matter of these computer-program inventions is that of machines, we appreciate that the classical principles apply, and the issue of patentable subject matter under the Constitution or under the patent statutes is not really involved at all.’Footnote ⁸⁵

Unlike hardware companies who presented intangible computer programs and tangible hardware as discrete and separate objects, software producers argued that the subject matter only made sense when the program and the machine were combined.Footnote ⁸⁶ While a programmable machine such as a general-purpose computer had potential, on their own these protean machines were ‘merely a “warehouse” of unrelated parts’.Footnote ⁸⁷ It was only when the program and hardware were combined to form a special purpose machine that the potential was able to be fulfilled.Footnote ⁸⁸ That is, it was only when the computer was combined with the program that these ‘moronic machines’ were ‘capable of accomplishing such varied jobs as corporate payrolls and Apollo moon shots.’Footnote ⁸⁹ When loaded with a specific program that ‘transfers the latent power of the theoretically general-purpose machine into a specific tool for solving real-world problems’,Footnote ⁹⁰ a computer becomes a special purpose machine; for example, ‘an inventory control machine, a tax-return machine, a machine for automatically controlling a factory such as an oil refinery, a medical diagnosis machine, an engineering design machine for performing various calculations and for designing other machines etc etc’.Footnote ⁹¹

For software producers, what made the modern electronic digital computers unique and the reason why they differed from piano players and jacquard looms was their ‘ability to be reconfigured via software into a seemingly infinite number of devices … it is the ability to be programmed via software that … encapsulates the essence of modern computing’.Footnote ⁹² While a piano roll would never change a player piano into anything but what it is, computers were universal machines that could ‘be programmed to perform an almost infinite range of operations from a musical synthesizer and a payroll system through to an airline reservation system, as a classically designed machine’.Footnote ⁹³

When viewed functionally, the addition of a software program to control a general-purpose computer was said to ‘be just as much a machine addition to it as the additional hardware programming’. In both cases, the addition of programming results in a machine that is different from the original. One reason for this was that a programmed computer was said to be ‘structurally different from the same machine without the program since its memory elements are differently arranged’.Footnote ⁹⁴ In this sense, software producers argued that by ‘programming a computer, the user creates a new machine’.Footnote ⁹⁵ As Robert Nimtz explained, ‘[d]uring the actual execution of a program, a logical process is taking place or a new logical machine is taking form … During such execution, a new logical machine is formed and new logical processes are carried out on that new machine. Generally speaking, it is these new extant machines and extant processes that are the subject matter of patent claims’.Footnote ⁹⁶ This way of viewing the subject matter enabled software producers to argue that the programmed computer acquired a new function recognizable by patent law. Importantly, this meant that the subject matter was potentially patentable.

While software companies argued that placing a different program into a computer fundamentally changed the nature of that computer, hardware companies consistently argued that a computer remained the same machine irrespective of the program that was used to operate it. As IBM said, the programming of a computer ‘does not vary the actual nature of the computer so as to constitute a patentable invention’.Footnote ⁹⁷ The idea that a computer remained the same whether or not it was programmed was highlighted in the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Gottschalk v. Benson where in response to Justice White’s question ‘When the computer is programmed … it is not the same machine as it is when it isn’t programmed?’, the Government Attorney replied: ‘It is precisely the same machine, Mr Justice White. It is precisely the same machine’.Footnote ⁹⁸ As the Government Attorney noted, ‘That is precisely the heart of our case’. The digital computer is ‘really no more than an extension of an adding machine or calculator’. He added:

By arguing that a computer was the same machine irrespective of whether it contained a new and different program, hardware manufacturers were able to argue that the ‘computer does not acquire a new function, in any sense recognizable by the patent law, every time it is programmed to perform a different set of arithmetical calculations, any more than a piano played acquires a new function each time it plays a new song’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In this sense hardware manufacturers were able to argue that the programming of a computer was no more than a conventional and unpatentable use of a known machine, similar to placing a new piano roll in a player piano. In both cases, the end result was patent ineligible. As IBM said, the programming of a computer ‘does not vary the actual nature of the computer so as to constitute a patentable invention’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ This, in turn, allowed the hardware manufacturers to assert that ‘computer-program inventions relate to things other than machines and therefore are non-patentable’.Footnote ¹⁰²

Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, hardware and software companies repeated their strategic and self-serving arguments about the nature of software-related subject matter in a range of venues including conferences, academic journals, trade magazine, policy reviews, newspapers, and amicus curia briefs (to both the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the Supreme Court). In so doing they not only highlighted how important the task of deciding what the subject matter was, they also highlighted how entrenched and divided the industry’s response was to this question. In a sense, the issue that underpinned these debates was whether or not the subject matter had been dematerialised. As we will see in Chapter 6, this had important ramifications for the way that patent law interacted with computer-related subject matter.