Samsung is fighting back against Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction that aims to block sales of its Galaxy Tab and some of its phones in the United States. It filed an opposition brief late last night, as reported by intellectual property analyst Florian Mueller.
The main part of Samsung’s opposition brief was filed under seal and therefore is not yet public record. Mueller obtained an interesting and unexpected exhibit in the documents, however – a still photo from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Samsung asserts the image filed last night as Exhibit D (see below) is “prior art,” evidence that the iPad’s design is not as original as Apple contends it is. According to Mueller, the opposition brief includes a link to a scene from the movie, and points out that 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.”
For those wanting to do the math, Kubrick’s classic movie was released in 1968, and Apple filed its patent design for the iPad in 2004.
Another of Samsung’s exhibits cites a scene from British TV’s The Tomorrow People, a sci-fi series for teens that ran for most of the 1970s, which similarly shows characters using a tablet computer.
Related Link:
Florian Mueller’s Fosspatents blog – http://tinyurl.com/3fzblt2
Still photo from 2001: A Space Odyssey entered into evidence –
