Add Judge Lucy Koh to the list of jurists who are fed up with silly patent arguments. All Things D reports that Koh on Thursday shot down Samsung’s (005930) plan to invalidate Apple’s (AAPL) patents by accusing the company of ripping off devices used by astronauts in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” with its iPad design.
Samsung first trotted out the novel argument that Apple stole from the sci-fi classic last year when it admitted into evidence a screenshot of the film where “two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers.” Even more dastardly was the fact that the tablet in the movie “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.”
While this argument is certainly creative, it’s also rather silly since it means that the first person to invent a flying car would be open to patent litigation from George Jetson.
