The ENIAC Patent (February 4, 1964)

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly received U.S. patent no. 3,120,606 for the ENIAC— a general patent on the stored-program electronic computer, roughly 18 years after their application. Sperry Rand Univac, owner of the patent, charged a 1.5 percent royalty for all electronic computers sold by all companies except IBM, with which it had previously cross-licensed patents.  Since IBM manufactured the majority of computers produced at this time, the royalties on the patent were not as large as they could have been.