Martin Goetz, who joined the computer industry in its infancy in the mid-1950s as a programmer working on Univac mainframes and who later received the first U.S. patent for software, died on Oct. 10 at his home in Brighton, Mass. In 1968, nearly a decade after he and several other partners started the company Applied Data Research, Mr. Goetz received his patent, for data-sorting software for mainframes. Ms. Jacobs said her father had patented his own software so that IBM could not copy it and put it on its machines. “By 1968, I had been involved in arguing about the patentability of software for about three years,” Mr. Goetz said in an oral history interview in 2002 for the University of Minnesota. “I knew at some point in time the patent office would recognize it.”

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Persons: Martin Goetz, Karen Jacobs, Goetz, Jacobs, ” Mr, “, ” Organizations: Univac, Applied Data Research, Computerworld, Software, IBM, University of Minnesota Locations: Brighton , Mass