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
Work on a drive that led to the world's first floppy disk and disk drive began in 1967 at a San Jose (CA) IBM facility, and introduced into the market in an 8-inch format in 1972. The more conveniently sized -inch disks were introduced in 1976, and became almost universal on dedicated word processing systems and personal computers. This format was more slowly replaced by the -inch format, first introduced in 1982. There was a significant period where both were popular. A number of other variant sizes were introduced over time, with limited market success.