(2008) In 1941 in the patent-law case Cuno Corp. v. Automatic Devices Corp., Justice William O. Douglas wrote on behalf of the US Supreme Court's majority that a "new device, however useful, must reveal the flash of creative genius, not merely the skill of the calling." (Congress in 1952 - a year before Robert and Phyllis Kearns were wed and Bob suffered an injury to his eye from a cork's propulsion off a bottle of champagne - modified the Court's ruling by legislation, discounting the significance of the characterization of the invention for patentability.)

In the 1960s Bob Kearns (Greg Kinnear), an inventor and professor teaching Applied Electrical Engineering in Detroit, experiences an epiphany for an invention ("Why couldn't a wiper work like an eyelid?"), resulting in his patenting the Kearns Blinking Eye Wiper (aka the intermittent windshield wiper, which since 1969 has been engineered into automobiles).

From 1978 through 1990, Kearns sues Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corp., finally getting to trial where he represents himself with the assistance of his oldest son Dennis. Adapted from John Seabrook's 1993 New Yorker article, Marc Abraham directed from the screenplay by Philip Railsback a dramatization (condensing the time period) of the courageous, arduous, 21-year quest by Robert Kearns (1927-2005) to recover recognition for his best invention. Ownership of an idea can be worth more to the originator than all the money in the world.

In collaboration with his long-time friend Gil Previck (Dermot Mulroney) of Previck Automotive (with which he shares the patent rights), Kearns gets an opportunity to demonstrate the wiper's functionality to Ford engineers. In a meeting with Ford executive Macklin Tyler, he's prevailed upon to provide the company with one of his devices (a working unit, he's told, to be sent to Washington, DC, for safety approval) with an oral understanding (involving a discussion of per-unit cost) that he would become the manufacturer of the wipers for Ford; thus, Kearns goes ahead with leasing a building and contracting with Motorola for the electrical components.

Suddenly the automaker backs out of the deal: "They strung us along and looked at my work." Not long afterward Kearns notices new Ford Mustang models sporting his wipers. Coming to his defense, patent attorney Gregory Lawson (Alan Alda) initially raises Kearns's hopes of a real fight with Ford and the other automakers for infringing on his invention, only to present the inventor with an offer from Ford of $250,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. "It's not about the money," Kearns keeps saying: it's about right and wrong - "They stole it from us."

Lawson, upset with Kearns for not accepting the settlement, declares that in America justice equals a check. From then on, Kearns obstinately decides to go it alone. Along the way he suffers a mental breakdown (spending time in the Rockville State Mental Facility in Maryland), loss of employment, abandonment by his wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham) with their six children, and the legal machinations of a huge corporation, stonewalling, responding with an avalanche of documentation (through which he must painstakingly search for the individual items requested), wearing him down, waiting with the patent courts jammed for his patents to expire.

However, once the trial's underway - Kearns employs a clever analogy with Charles Dickens's novel, A Tale of Two Cities, of how an existing technology can be formed into new patterns to produce an entirely unique product - before a jury ("the conscience of the community") an offer descends via head legal counsel Charlie Dafao from Ford of $30 million dollars to settle the case - once again lacking any acknowledgement of theft or Kearns's being the wiper's inventor.

Early on Bob muses to Phyllis: What does it take to be successful, brains and talent or maybe luck and timing? In this case, all of the above plus plenty of perseverance. So many others (e.g. Preston Tucker of the 1948 Tucker Torpedo) lacked the means and stamina to take on carmakers and other powerful industrial companies that have cheated inventors of their rightful due. Not mentioned in the film, the decision in the Federal Circuit Court was appealed with the original verdict upheld; the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting the lower court's decision stand.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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