[Swordmaker]

Apple stole the GUI and mouse from Xerox. When are the penalties for THAT?

Sigh. How MANY TIMES do I have to repeat my self on FreeRepublic shooting down this LIE! Apple paid Xerox with 1,000,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple common stock for two eight hour visits to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and for the rights to use what they learned there. Xerox sold those shares three years after the public offering for over $16 million.

The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), not PARC, and Apple paid royalties to SRI until the the patents on the computer mouse expired.

There IS no penalty for that which was bought and paid for, Red. Stop spreading lies!

[null and void]

Yup. The first mouse is on prominent display at the SRI headquarters.

SRI is another example of technological genus hampered by utter marketing idiocy.

Hey guys! I've just invented a new data input device!

Cool! What are you gonna call it?

(head scratching and conversations with the smartest people on earth follow)

I know! Let's name it after something cold, slimy and slow!

We'll call it a TURTLE!

The rest is marketing history...