Flash of Genius (2008)

Directed by

Marc Abraham

Genre

drama film, biographical film, docudrama, trial film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h

Rated

PG-13

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 250 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A college professor named Robert Kearns invents an intermittent windshield wiper. He spends years in a legal fight with Ford Motor Company after he believes they stole his idea.

frustratingdeterminedtensethoughtfulsombermethodicalearnestslow-burn

What happens

Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical drama film directed by Marc Abraham. Philip Railsback wrote the screenplay based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook. The story focuses on Robert Kearns (played by Greg Kinnear) and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company after they developed an intermittent windshield wiper based on ideas the inventor had patented. The film's title comes from the phrase "flash of genius" (like "stroke of genius"), which is patent law terminology that was in effect from 1941 to 1952, although Kearns's patent was filed in 1964; it held that the inventive act must come into the mind of an inventor as a kind of epiphany, and not as the result of tinkering. The film opened on 1,098 screens in the United States on October 3, 2008, and earned $2.2 million on its opening weekend. It remained in theaters for only three weeks, and eventually grossed only $4.6 million worldwide, coming up short against its $20 million budget. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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