Court Ruling Supports Claims that Microsoft’s First OS was Stolen

Dismissing a defamation suit brought by the inventor of DOS against a British writer, a judge has left unchallenged computer industry lore that holds the operating system Microsoft licensed to IBM in the 1980s — thereby launching Bill Gates’ multibillion dollar software empire — was a knock off. In a book on American innovation, author Sir Harold Evans wrote that DOS inventor Tim Paterson relied heavily on an existing OS called CP/M (Control Program/Monitor) created by a programmer, Gary Kildall, who has since died. Microsoft in 1980 struck a licensing deal with Paterson’s company — Seattle Computer Products — to obtain access to DOS and resell it to IBM