Starting in the 1970s, and probably before, Fireman's Fund Insurance ran weekly updates of their very large tape master file. Joe Blank was a programmer there and he wrote a batch program that he named DUMPER, to read the master file and create several extract files for various applications so those applications could read the small extract file for their testing, rather than the multi-reel master file. Seeing the value, he later created ISPF panels to run the program, and do several other functions programmers could use at their desks. Fireman's Fund gave him permission to quit and market that program. He contracted with one individual to do marketing, who didn't work out well. Then he contracted with Compuware, which was an established company and marketed ABENDAID, which was used by many companies. In their conversations, Compuware suggested that the program be renamed to FILEAID to match what they already had, and Joe Blank agreed to that idea.
In the '70s, he (Joe) talked to someone at Bank of America, and I was asked to review the program to see if it would be good. I'd written a program, as did many other programmers, that used PARM field input to scan a file, for a character string. DUMPER (FILEAID) was not faster than mine, but was orders of magnitude more universal, and the bank did lease it, with 4 years of maintenance.
Some years later, Joe told me that Compuware wanted to rewrite it in a more portable language so they could market it to run on systems other than IBM mainframes. Joe thought that would be good and helped with the rewrite. Unknown to Joe, Compuware's intend was to rewrite it, so it was their code, and they no longer had to pay Joe Blank for his program. They did that, and left Joe out in the cold (although he was likely fairly well off by then). There was a copy of FILEAID source on the CBT tape (now an online database), likely put there by Joe Blank, but unfortunately it seems to have been removed.
When I talked to Compuware support and mentioned Joe Blank many years (decades) ago, I was told that the only communication they had with him was through their lawyers. So there was likely a lawsuit, but in general, you cannot patent computer programs (there are some very limited exceptions) so Joe was pretty much out of luck. Once that was finished, I expect that Joe submitted his last version of the program to the CBT tape folks.
Sometime later, Compuware was bought by BMC software, and they are now the source for FILEAID. It has become fairly expensive, and IBM now provides some of the function that companies found beneficial, so I suspect it's likely that their customer base has shrunk. (Many folks used the version that was on the CBT tape, THAT HAS NOW BEEN DELETED.)
"Why?" you might ask. Because Connecticut Bank and Trust is gone, and BMC threatened to sue the guy who, out of the goodness of his heart now maintains the database. (Yeah, I talked to him. Nice guy.) SO, the company that stole Joe Blank's program now threatens to sue anyone that makes Joe Blank's program publicly available. (and as soon as they see this, they'll threaten to sue me as well.) I just checked, and Wikipedia does not have an article on Fileaid. IF I was to guess, BMC threatened to sue them as well.
In any case, to keep the remnants of my mind active, I've been writing code (IBM assembler language - it's what I know) for various things including search programs like this. Who knows, maybe I'll write something useful. (Uh huh, maybe I'll be young and have lots of hair and fly my hang glider again.)