🎥 If you’re into intellectual property or innovation, these movies are a must-watch.
🎥 If you’re into intellectual property or innovation, these movies are a must-watch.
- Joy
This 2015 film starring Jennifer Lawrence is loosely inspired by the life of Joy Mangano, the inventor behind the self-wringing “Miracle Mop”.
The name “Miracle” turned out to be a good omen for Mangano, who sold 18,000 units in under 30 minutes during her first appearance on the U.S. television shopping network QVC.
Mangano later became a successful entrepreneur, building a consumer product empire backed by strong intellectual property: she is named as an inventor in 72 patent families. Her patented inventions include non-slip hangers, foldable tables, portable clothes dryers, luggage with interior shelves and collapsible drawers, and many more.
The movie also includes a storyline involving a patent scam by a Hong Kong manufacturer, made worse by poor legal advice Joy received from a lawyer with no patent expertise.
💡 The lesson for inventors is that a great idea doesn’t have to be complex — many of Mangano’s most successful patents solve everyday problems. However, protecting it requires serious strategy. Input from a qualified patent attorney can make all the difference.
- The Billion Dollar Code
This miniseries is based on the story of the patent infringement legal battle between the German collective ART+COM and Google, over an early 3D Earth visualization technology (“TerraVision”).
The actual lawsuit took place in the United States between 2014 and 2017, where US patent RE44,550 owned by ART+COM was ultimately invalidated due to prior public use of a similar system developed at SRI International. Put simply, it did not matter whether Google copied the invention claimed in the patent or not, because someone else got there first and made it public. That made ART+COM’s patent invalid.
The series fictionalizes or omits key elements, likely to emphasize the David vs. Goliath narrative: a Berlin-based team of artists and coders against a global tech giant.
đź”’ Still, it is a powerful reminder of how critical it is to secure your IP early, and of the risks of sharing ideas (or, as in this case, codes) without any confidentiality obligations in place.
- My cousin Vinny
This popular courtroom comedy is about two college students wrongly accused of murder after having accidentally shoplifted a can of tuna in a shop in Alabama.
Desperate, the two students turn to their cousin Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), a rookie lawyer who has just passed the bar after several failed attempts.
The movie isn’t about patents at all, but it earns a place on this list for its lesson on discovery.
Hoping to “finesse” the prosecutor, Vinny joins him on a hunting trip and returns bragging to his fiancé Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) about the huge stack of evidence he has obtained. Mona Lisa explains that the prosecutor was legally obliged to share those documents in the first place: that’s discovery.
As the movie illustrates, in U.S. litigation (including patent cases) the discovery phase compels each party to disclose relevant evidence such as depositions, technical documents, emails… much of which may later become public. Certain non‑U.S. jurisdictions have procedures with similar effects.
🚨 The takeaway is that whatever you write today could end up in the courtroom tomorrow. Refrain from statements like “We copied their design” or other assertions which can be read as willful patent infringement. If there is any patent concern, consult a qualified patent attorney.