The Apple vs. Samsung court case in Europe over whether seems to get more ridiculous by the day. Recently, Samsung introduced as prior art footage from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicted astronauts watching video on tablets that looked very similar to the design of the iPad. Inspired by this notion, CNet put together a photo gallery suggesting other patents that could be invalidated by science-fictional prior art—including a comparison of the Kindle to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Of course, they neglect to mention that this isn’t even the first case of science fiction being used to invalidate a patent. In the 1970s, inventor Charles Hall attempted to patent a waterbed design, but failed on the grounds that Robert Heinlein had depicted such a device in his science fiction, and it thus constituted prior art.
In any event, it’s hard to imagine that Apple can seriously expect to prevail given how necessarily similar any tablet design has to be in order to do its job. After all, there are only so many ways to design a flat slab of touch-sensitive glass.
So, we’re no calling personal video screens mounted on a table tablets? Oddly enough, both screens are displaying identical content. It’s a wild stretch to call this prior art on a Trade Dress issue when they don’t resemble iPads.