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 is derived from patent law terminology, in effect from 1941 to 1952, that argued the idea for...
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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 is derived from patent law terminology, in effect from 1941 to 1952, that argued the idea for an invention could come to someone out of nowhere and without years of working on it beforehand.
On his wedding night in 1953, an errant champagne cork rendered college professor of engineering Robert Kearns almost completely blind in his left eye. A decade later, happily married to Phyllis and the father of six children, he is driving his Ford Galaxie through a light rain, and the constant movement of the wiper blades irritates his troubled vision. The incident inspires him to create a wiper blade mechanism modeled on the human eye, which...
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