Ownership and the History of American Computing

Citation: Gerardo Con Diaz (2012) Ownership and the History of American Computing. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1109/MAHC.2012.29
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1109/MAHC.2012.29
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1109/MAHC.2012.29
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Ownership and the History of American Computing
Download: https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2012/02/man2012020088.pdf
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Summary

Historiography of [computing] ownership is comprised of legal history (dominant, eg Pamela Samuelson) and a much smaller examination of "the historical interplay between technological development and IP law"; the "historical study of ownership and computing can link these two families of work."

Provides very high level history starting with patents used to ensure corporations' "growth in light of the federal government's increasingly strict antitrust enforcement." Says corporate IP was focused on protecting "machines" rather than software initially, with patents, trade secrets, and limitations on employee mobility. In 1980 computer programs added to U.S. copyright law and a 1981 case established that programs that somehow manipulate matter could be patentable. Also in the 1980s the Free Software Movement emerged.

"The study of ownership and computing...demonstrates that software patents are not an isolated problem in the history of intellectual property law. Rather, they are evidence of a series of conflicts as old as computing itself."