{"id":60333,"date":"2009-12-02T17:00:32","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T22:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091202\/1243097165.shtml"},"modified":"2009-12-02T17:00:32","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T22:00:32","slug":"science-fiction-movie-accused-of-patent-infringement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/60333","title":{"rendered":"Science Fiction Movie Accused Of Patent Infringement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Famed author Arthur C. Clarke once explained<\/a> that he never patented the the concept of geostationary communications satellites, which many say he invented, because a lawyer told him the concept was “too far-fetched to be taken seriously.” But what about things going in the other direction. If, in a book or a movie, you describe or display a technology that has already been patented, is it infringement? Most people would dismiss such a concept as flat-out ridiculous. But a company called Global Findability apparently disagrees. It has sued Summit Entertainment, the producers of the sci-fi film, Knowing<\/i><\/a>, an apparently otherwise dreadful flick<\/a> that includes — as a central plot point — an “encoded message [that] predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years.”<\/p>\n

Yes, Global Findability is claiming that its patent on “Integrated information processing system for geospatial media” (Patent 7107286<\/a>) was infringed by this fictional device. Eriq Gardner, at THREsq, sums it up nicely:<\/p>\n


\nWe’re familiar with patent troll lawsuits. We’re also aware that Hollywood is prone to allegations of idea theft. But what we seem to have here is a strange new genre-bending legal claim where one can infringe technology in fiction similar to the way one can defame a person in fiction.
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Famed author Arthur C. Clarke once explained that he never patented the the concept of geostationary communications satellites, which many say he invented, because a lawyer told him the concept was “too far-fetched to be taken seriously.” But what about things going in the other direction. If, in a book or a movie, you describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}