

Intel Patent: Byte swap operation for a 64 bit operand (award for obviousness?) - nickb
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7047383.html

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tlrobinson
I believe the reason we have both big and little endianness is due to some
idiotic patent way back in the day. One company managed to patent big endian
byte ordering, so others decided to use little endian to avoid licensing it.

