Xerox to Spin Off Research Lab

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 12 -- The Xerox Corp. research lab in Silicon Valley is being spun off into an independent company in an effort to attract outside investors.

Xerox previously indicated that it would look for "strategic partners" to help commercialize inventions developed at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). To that end, Xerox will make PARC into a separate, wholly owned subsidiary as of Jan. 1. Xerox is in talks with several potential investors, according to a company spokesman.

PARC, founded in 1970, was the birthplace of such inventions as the laser printer, the building blocks of computer networking, "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" word processing and the graphic user interface that replaced all-text displays and that was adopted by Apple Computer.