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.
Integrated Woz Machine
When developing a floppy drive for the Apple II, Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak felt that the existing ones available on the market were too complicated, expensive and inefficient. Rather than adopting the existing floppy drives
from Alan Shugart, Wozniak decided to keep only the drive mechanics and to develop his own electronics for both the drive as well as the controller.