
Although the U.S. copyright office accepted the registration of com-
puter programs as early as 1964, computer software was not recognized as
intellectual property until the Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980
was passed, which defined compiled applications as copyrightable. Before
1980, a developer could copyright the source code of a computer pro-
gram but not the compiled application, because only the source code was
readable.
Shortly before the Computer Software Copyright Act, Bill Gates pas-
sionately demonstrated this point in an interview taped by Dennis
Bathory-Kitsz (see www.thesync.com/geeks/gates1980.html). During the
interview, Gates stated, ...