Yoshiro Nakamatsu
Nakamatsu claims IBM reached licensing agreements with him in the late 1970s. He also claims to have licensed his floppy disk to IBM in 1979, but that the details are "confidential". An IBM spokesman, Mac Jeffery, confirmed that the company did license some of his patents, but claimed they were not for the floppy disk, which he claimed IBM invented on its own. Another IBM spokesman, Brian Doyle, said they licensed 14 patents from Nakamatsu, but also claimed that they do not have anything to do with the floppy disk.
Disk pack
The first removable disk pack was invented in 1961 by IBM engineers R. E. Pattison as part of the LCF (Low Cost File) project headed by Jack Harker. The 14-inch (356 mm) diameter disks introduced by IBM became a "de facto" standard, with many vendors producing disk drives using 14-inch disks in disk packs and cartridges into the 1980s.