In August 2011, in response to
Apple Computer's patent infringement lawsuit against
Samsung, the latter argued that Apple's
iPad was effectively modeled on the visual tablets that appear aboard spaceship
Discovery in the
Space Odyssey film, which legally constitute "prior art". Legally, prior art is information that has been disclosed to the public in any form about an invention before a given date that might be relevant to the patent's claim of originality.
[155] Samsung appealed specifically to a clip appearing on YouTube arguing
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. 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.
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"Siri", Apple's intelligent voice control personal assistant for the
iPhone, features three references to the film; a modem that looks like HAL's faceplate, if asked to sing it might reply "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do", and it responds "I'm sorry I can't do that" when asked to "open the pod bay doors".
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Inspired by Clarke's visual tablet device, in 1994 a European Commission-funded R&D project code named "NewsPAD" developed and pilot tested a portable 'multimedia viewer' aiming for the realisation of an electronic multimedia 'newspaper' pointing the way to a future fully interactive and highly personalised information source. Involved partners were Acorn RISC Technologies UK, Archimedes GR, Carat FR, Ediciones Primera Plana ES, Instut Catala de Tecnologia ES, and TechMAPP UK.
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