I think American patents changed some time in the past decade to match how they’re done in the rest of the world; The first person to patent the thing gets the rights completely regardless of the time or person the implementation is associated with.
Prior art still invalidates patents AFAIK. Unless there's some recent Fed Circuit decision that changes that.
But only in the first year after first publication. So if the feature was available elsewhere for long enough, no patent for anybody.
Good thing this patent does not protect any programming language features.
(It protects how Apple implemented some features)
Out of curiosity, which language would you say first implemented optionals?
This is a specialisation of algebraic datatypes, it has to go at least as far back as SML.
I don't know which specific language, but there been around since at least 80s I would guess.