Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical film directed by Marc Abraham. The screenplay by Philip Railsback, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, focuses on Robert Kearns and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company when they developed an intermittent windshield wiper based on ideas the inventor had patented. The phrase "flash of genius", after which the film is titled, is patent law terminology which was in effect from 1941 to 1952, which held that the inventive act must come into the mind of an inventor as a kind of epiphany and not as a result of tinkering.