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Comment by calpaterson | Hacker News Reader

I don't know whether HP licensed anything. I doubt it, I suppose.

It seems Apple didn't license anything from Xerox either. Considering you think otherwise, I'd be interested in a citation. It's well documented that Xerox tried to sue (but they failed).

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I googled the Xerox v Apple case, and in the first paragraph of section I ("ALLEGATIONS OF XEROX' COMPLAINT"), it says:

> On June 9, 1981, Xerox granted Apple a license pursuant to which Apple agreed to "participate in a project with the Learning Research Group at PARC/Xerox for the purpose of implementing the Smalltalk-80 language and system on a hardware system to be developed by [Apple]."

So clearly even Xerox admitted they licensed some of their work to Apple.

[1]: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433...

Hold on - that doesn't seem to say what people want to think it's saying, does it? That's a license to use Smalltalk-80 in products. It isn't a license to use the Xerox Parc system or look and feel at all. I think the point remains: if there had been software patents at the time of the original litigation, Xerox would have won. Am I missing something?

Xerox and Apple had a deal, so all you are implying is wrong. I found this article, it's German, but a couple YT videos are embedded about that time. I read about it in the Steve Jobs bio too.

http://www.mac-history.de/die-geschichte-des-apple-macintosh...

Here is a referenced blog post, that also discusses the lawsuit:

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