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.
History of the floppy disk
The new device first shipped in 1971 as the 23FD, the program load component of the 2835 Storage Control Unit. and then as a standard part of most System 370 processing units and other IBM products. Internally IBM used another device, code named "Mackerel", to write boot disks for distribution to the field.