My step-dad, Bill Paxton, worked at Xerox and he told me they were notorious for creating amazing products but not holding onto them. The mouse is a huge example.
I remember playing two different network games on their system in the early 80's (we're talking 82' here!): In one you were an eyeball in a maze and the other was a killer Star Trek game that I wish existed today!
He went on to help create postscript for adobe with John Warnock and Chuck Geschke. Xerox had a lot of Stanford University connections.