Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request

[MacRumors]

As we've noted in a number of reports in recent months, Apple and Samsung are currently engaged in a high-stakes intellectual property battle, with Apple seeking injunctions in a number of countries to prevent Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab and other Android-based products. Apple claims that Samsung has infringed upon Apple's intellectual property rights by copying the designs of popular Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

In a curious turn of events noted by FOSS Patents, Samsung has turned to the film industry in its defense against Apple's request for an injunction in the United States.

According to court filings, Samsung has presented a scene from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey as evidence of prior art that should invalidate Apple's design claims on the iPad. From the filing:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D'889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor.

The patent in question is a design patent covering the ornamental design of the iPad, with Apple claiming that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is substantially identical to that design. By pointing to an example of a similar design made public in 1968, even if not an actual functioning tablet device, Samsung hopes to demonstrate that there is little variation possible when designing a tablet and show that the general concept used by Apple for the iPad has actually been circulating for decades.

Article Link: Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request

 

[Tomorrow]

Gotcha, Steve. By about 40 years, too.

 

[MultiMediaWill]

Apple better watch out or they might turn into an illegal monopoly.

Also this BS has to stop. Competition only benefits the consumer. Apple should just leave everyone alone and focus on even better products and upgrades.

 

[aprofetto8]

Steve Jobs just needs to play stupid and pretend he's never seen the movie!

 

[Intarweb]

Appwned.

 

[joneill55]

Wow, those Samsung Lawyers must be on some really good drugs

 

[ridley182]

Samsung is a sad, sad company.

I fully expect them to come out with a bunch of iMac clones if they buy HP's PC division. I mean they already ripped off the Macbook Airs.

 

[Speedtoy]

Those arent tablets...did anyone in that scene pick one up? Move it?

Its a display table.

 

[NAG]

Apple better watch out or they might turn into an illegal monopoly.

While I am not implying that it is impossible for Apple to become such a thing, can you give some evidence? The case against Microsoft involved quite a few specific anticompetitive behaviors (some of which are similar to how Google treats the OEMs).

Patent reform is a serious issue, lets not muddy the waters by throwing around side issues.

 

[Matariel]

Wow, that is genius.

Kudos to Samsung's lawyers, I don't think you can get more prior than that.

 

[Mars478]

I want some of that drug.

 

[thevofl]

This is brilliant!

 

[Joe-Diver]

Steve: Stop selling the Galaxy Tab!

TAB10.1: I'm sorry Steve, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Steve: What's the problem?

TAB10.1: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Steve: What are you talking about, TAB?

TAB10.1: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

 

[Gen]

Good point Samsung
Glad to see that 2001 is still relevant

 

[delonh92]

Really samsung. Their is so much ways you can make a tablet look different.
BB playbook, Asus transformer. Acer Iconia, Toshiba Thrive. All are different designs.

 

[cmaier]

Even if true, how does this help them? Isn't Apple asserting trademarks and trade dress (in addition to design patents)? If so, prior use is no defense.

 

[BKF]

I think it's great that their source is a YouTube clip, surely copied and uploaded without permission. A nervy way to wage an intellectual property battle!

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Those arent tablets...did anyone in that scene pick one up? Move it?

Its a display table.

Nope. Limits of visual effects (and budget) at the time meant they kept their tablets on the table and their hands/heads/bodies out of way.

OTOH - I love seeing disputes coming up against prior art from science fiction. It's a reassuring thing to see that the predicted future of the past is coming true.

 

[al256]

Desperate times call for desperate measures...

 

[DTphonehome]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'm no lawyer, but how does a pretend device prove prior art?

 

[nylonsteel]

re samsung 2001 claims

samsung you make me laugh

next you will claim patent dispute ofver star trek (tos) devices

tos communicators = cell phones
tos spock's data disks = memery cards

samsung dont get aapl too mad or else aapl will unleash the full wrath of thunderbolt on you ($40 cable not included)

 

[dgree03]

OH NO she dit-ent

 

[lilo777]

Really samsung. Their is so much ways you can make a tabelt look different.
BB playbook, Asus transformer. Acer Iconia, Toshiba Thrive. All are different designs.

But why should they? Because you don't like it?

 

[chrmjenkins]

Those arent tablets...did anyone in that scene pick one up? Move it?

Its a display table.

The table is obviously meant to be vacant underneath given it is a table for eating and the occupants' legs must go under it. Furthermore, the edges of these tablets can be seen hanging over the edges of the table at odd angles. The combination of these two facts are there to make it clear that they are mobile tablets and not fixed displays.

At the time of filming, they would have only had large CRTs to do this shot with, so the actors could not move them. They had to create the illusion by placing them in an environment where it would not make sense for them to not be tablets.

 

[Matariel]

Those arent tablets...did anyone in that scene pick one up? Move it?

Its a display table.

They're tablets, you can clearly see them in the close-up shots, even on the wide angle you can see the corners hanging off the side of the table.
They're never moved on-screen because of the technology they used to make them work, 2001 was made prior to blue/green screen technology.
As far as I remember, they actually used film projectors, and projected the image directly on the screens.