10 Movies With Surprising Real World Consequences
4. Being Used As A Legal Defence - 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the absolute granddaddies of sci-fi.
Stanley Kubrick's surrealist voyage is one of the most important and influential films of all time, as well as home to one of the most chilling baddies ever captured on film.
Sentient supercomputer HAL 9000 is the most famous piece of technology in the film, which is littered with futuristic looks at how the world might turn out.
Well, futuristic for 1968.
Kubrick's interpretation of Arthur C. Clarke's work was actually more accurate than you might think, as one major company attempted to demonstrate.
Samsung got themselves into legal hot water over the attempted release of their Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer. Apple, who felt the design infringed on their own iPad, attempted to block the sale of the device. Samsung countered by claiming that they didn't invent the tablet - this movie did.
As part of their actual legal defence, Samsung attached a screenshot from the film displaying astronauts using what appear to be tablets. They claimed that this was proof that Apple couldn't own the rights to the design and that they should be free to sell theirs.
It didn't work, but you can't blame them for trying.