What was the first U.S. patent for a software program?

The first U.S. patent for a software program was a sorting system. Martin Goetz developed it at Applied Data Research, and the invention received U.S. Patent No. 3,380,029 in 1968.

The system was designed to sort data stored across magnetic tape units. Its method repeatedly created sorted strings and merged them into larger, ordered sequences, allowing mainframe computers to handle data sets too large for immediate memory. Goetz filed the application in 1965, when software was commonly bundled with hardware rather than sold as an independent product.

The patent is often described as covering a data-sorting algorithm or a sorting-system program. Those descriptions refer to the same milestone; “Sorting system” is also the official patent title. The patent helped establish Applied Data Research as an early independent software company and contributed to debate over whether software should receive patent protection.

This answer is sometimes confused with a spreadsheet, database, or word processor. None of those was the subject of the first widely recognized U.S. software patent.