And so it was, approximately 40 years ago, that Satya Pal Asija created Swift-Answer, a piece of software used for “full text, free-form, narrative, information input, storage and retrieval.” With his creation, Asija set forth on a quest to get his software patented — not copyrighted, mind you — in order to offer software creators the same protection from imitators that other inventors were offered. And 28 years ago, on May 26, the world’s first software patent was approved.
— 28 years ago today: World’s first software patent successfully filed

and now we find ourself in a world in which amazon.com patented a method of clicking a button to buy something from a website.