Intel Patent: Byte swap operation for a 64 bit operand (award for obviousness?)

[nickb]

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7047383.html

[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.