What is the name of the company at brought networking technology to the commercial market?

Question

The 4 founders of this company stole the software and hardware designs from the government and built a company that eventually was worth 1.123 billion dollars. One of the founders name is Dennis Fairclough. Dose anyone know the story

The 4 founders were originally working for the government's ARPA net at a government contractor. They blackmailed their supervisor and walked out the door with 100 million dollars of government paid research on IP packet switching and DNS resolution software. There is a hidden story here that has never been told.

The original company first began to fail for lack of funding, then a big business man came and and bought it up. When this big business man found out about the theft he fired the remaining of the 4 founders. Novell is right, what was it called before Novell?

Novell Data Systems began life in 1979 as a computer manufacturer and maker of disk operating systems. In January 1983, Jack Messman and Safeguard Scientifics, a venture capital firm, reincorporated NDSI as Novell, Inc., source: http://www.novell.com/news/press/pressroom/history.html

Answer 1

Novell

Answer 2

Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (Novell)

Answer 3

Sounds dubious. Back in the day the US government was not in business and did not license technology.

Answer 4

Al Gore Enterprises?

Just a guess...