In the wake of Steve Jobs's resignation as CEO of Apple, people are wondering who will be his successor. Stanley Kubrick might have been a good choice — if he were still alive. The sci-fi auteur did, after all, envision the iPad long before Jobs, according to Samsung's lawyers.

The Korean electronics manufacturer is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Apple, Wired reported, which alleges that the design of Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet infringes on Apple's intellectual property rights — in short, that the Galaxy 10.1 is a ripoff of the iPad. To their defense, Samsung's filing, published by Talking Points Memo, asserts that Kubrick's 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey" had already depicted such a device:

"In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. As with the design claimed by the D'889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor."

Apple seeks to ban sales of the Galaxy 10.1 throughout Europe, and a judge in Düsseldorf stated court proceedings to do so would likely succeed in Germany, according to the New York Times. 

It's clear the iPad had existed in the imagination well before its highly anticipated release in 2010, for Hollywood has always projected technologies inventors would eventually realize. Since the '80s, Jean-Luc Picard and Geordi La Forge were regular iPad users on the Starship Enterprise. And surely, to solve any disputes that may arise over the inventors of the Roomba, the tanning bed, the treadmill, or the video phone, one would need only to refer to the Jetsons.

Watch the clip from 2001: A Space Odyssey below: