Kubrick and the iPad
by Paolo Valassi
www.orizzontikubrickiani.it
At the end of 2011, a news story came out according to which, in the ongoing lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, among the evidence presented by the lawyers was one of Kubrick's most famous films, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Korean company and Apple were fighting a very tough legal battle over the Samsung Galaxy, a tablet that according to the lawyers of the company founded by Steve Jobs is too similar to the iPad, from which it had adopted, without paying the due amount, many patented solutions. Nothing new in a world where billion-dollar interests circulate.
But it seems that Samsung's lawyers decided to base part of their defense on one of Kubrick's masterpieces.
The film, released in 1968, anticipated many things that we would see years later, including (at least according to the Korean lawyers) tablets.
Samsung claimed that there was a so-called "prior art", that is, a previous production that nullified the characteristic of total novelty necessary to access a patent, and that this is found in a scene of the film.
The two astronauts Poole and Bowman, on a mission to search for the monolith, are eating together. Each, next to his tray containing freeze-dried food, has a thin tablet that he uses as a display.
According to Samsung, this representation invalidated one of the Cupertino company's patents since the film was obviously released long before Apple designed the iPad.
Speaking of shameless lawyers, an episode came to mind, again linked to the world of cinema (where in reality accusations of plagiarism are very frequent).
Sergio Leone's first big success, A Fistful of Dollars from 1964, is shamelessly copied from the 1961 Japanese film Yojimbo - The Challenge of the Samurai by Akira Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune. The Japanese naturally sued for plagiarism but the Italian lawyers (precisely, without shame) argued that Leone had not been "inspired" by Yojimbo but rather by the commedia dell'arte, by Goldoni's Harlequin Servant of Two Masters. Beyond the specific episode, art is form, not content. As Leone, among others, demonstrates, variations can be made on the style, on how something is done. This is where originality comes from. This is where A Fistful of Dollars is different from Yojimbo, or, to give another example, The Magnificent Seven by John Sturges is different from Seven Samurai, also by Kurosawa.
Now, the question is: is the iPad art?
Update 2012: Apple has won the legal battle against Samsung: the Korean company paid 1.05 billion dollars because it willfully infringed at least three Apple patents. But the jury ruled that the Galaxy Tab is not copied from the iPad.
