The earlier post is “false” only if “took” can only be interpreted as “steal”, which is false. My point was that Apple wasn’t as creative as people commonly think.
As for the license, I don’t believe there is one. Jobs wanted to look at what Xerox had, and ultimately I believe Xerox said he could take a look in exchange for letting Xerox have 100,000 Apple shares (pre-IPO) for $1 million. “Taking a look” means Jobs got tours and could inspect the technology while on the tours.
Many at PARC thought allowing Jobs to take a look was crazy, but apparently the corporate executives in Rochester didn’t care. There was no license (at least at that point), but I also believe that PARC hadn’t patented the mouse or done any legal intellectual property work on the GUI. Consequently, from a legal perspective both the GUI and the mouse were only protected as trade secrets, which protection would have been waived by the tours in the absence of a confidentiality agreement, of which there was none that I know of. This is why I say that I don’t think there is a license agreement. Moreover, while I was in Silicon Valley during those years I never heard anyone say or suggest that Apple licensed the mouse or the GUI from Xerox. If you have a 10K or something similar that says Apple is a licensee (and this would almost certainly have to be disclosed because the GUI was a major asset of Apple) I will gladly concede the point.