Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical film directed by Marc Abraham. The screenplay by Philip Railsback, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, focuses on Robert Kearns and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company when they developed an intermittent windshield wiper based on ideas the inventor had patented.
The film's title, the phrase "flash of genius," is patent law terminology which was in effect from 1941 to 195...
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Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical film directed by Marc Abraham. The screenplay by Philip Railsback, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, focuses on Robert Kearns and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company when they developed an intermittent windshield wiper based on ideas the inventor had patented.
The film's title, the phrase "flash of genius," is patent law terminology which was in effect from 1941 to 1952, which held that the inventive act must come into the mind of an inventor as a kind of epiphany and not as a result of tinkering. Although this test lasted little more than a decade, it was most likely an appealing and easy standard for judges and unsophisticated jurors to apply to any given patent dispute when the technology being disputed was beyond their scientific acumen.
On his wedding night in 1953, an errant champagne cork renders college engineering professor Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear) almost completely blind in his left eye. A...
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