The Billion Dollar Code is a 2021German television miniseries starringBjörn Freiberg, Seumas F. Sargent and Leonard Scheicher.[1][2] Based on true events, the series was developed for Netflix, where it was first aired in October 2021 along with an additionalfeature story episode.
The plot follows two interconnected timelines. InBerlin of the 1990s, a group of younghackers and art students had founded theART+COM collaboration to play at the cutting edge ofcomputer programming anddigital art. They had developed a planet browser in 1991 which was used byJoachim Sauter to get funding fromDeutsche Telekom in 1993 to start the successful development ofTerraVision.[3] In the series, the ART+COM beginnings were dropped, while several of the real persons and stakeholders were fused to a smaller cast, with the fictional Carsten Schlüter as the main artist and Juri Müller as the main programmer.
The other storyline revolves around the 2014patent infringement dispute againstGoogle, alleging that TerraVision was used to developGoogle Earth.[4] The fictional character Brian Anderson is based onBrian McClendon and Michael T Jones who did foundKeyhole Inc to develop a planet browser.[5] That company was bought by Google in 2004. The movie dramatized facets of the real lawsuit that lasted until 2017, with the script reproducing only parts of the actual court statements to avoid coming into conflict with Google[4] and having key parts of the proceedingsfictionalized or omitted.
The names of the main characters were changed for dramatic purposes and multiple involved people were merged into two, among themJoachim Sauter, Pavel Mayer, Axel Schmidt and Gerd Grüneis.[6]
The featurette shows the actual persons involved in the TerraVision project, except for Professor Joachim Sauter who died in July 2021.
One of the co-founders of Keyhole has published a first-hand account claiming to debunk the origins, timelines and interpretations depicted in the fictionalized miniseries.[7]
The miniseries dramatizes the lawsuit, the proceedings of which lasted until 2017. Art+Com lost at trial[8] and on appeal.[9] The filmmakers used portions of the trial transcript to avoid coming into conflict with Google,[4] but key aspects of the trial were entirely fictionalized or omitted.[8] The actual decision of the court was in fact based on other findings.
In the Netflix series, the character Brian Anderson is asked his opinion under oath about the Terravision software and says, “To be honest, it was fantastic then and fantastic now.” When Michael T. Jones testified, he did say “It was fantastic then and it is fantastic now”, but he was talking about the ball interface, a 3D mouse. He went on to say: “And I liked the ball a lot, actually. But as far as the actual computer part, I was not particularly impressed with that part.”[10]
In the Netflix series, the character Brian Anderson is portrayed as having lied under oath in response to the question “Did you tell Mr. Müller that Google Earth never would have been possible without Terravision?” In reality, Michael T. Jones was never asked this question.[8] Michael T. Jones died in January 2021.[11]
The Netflix series depicts the invalidation of Art+Com's patent at trial, but does not portray the testimony of Stephen Lau, a former employee of the federally-funded, not-for-profitStanford Research Institute ("SRI"), whose testimony is principally responsible for the patent's invalidation. He testified that he developed an earth visualization application for SRI called TerraVision, and that he shared and discussed SRI TerraVision's code with Art+Com. Both SRI and Art+Com systems used a multi-resolution pyramid of imagery to let users zoom from high to low altitudes, and both were called Terravision. Art+Com agreed to rename their product because SRI's came first. Because Art+Com did not include reference to SRI's TerraVision as "prior art" in its patent application, Art+Com's patent was declared invalid.[12] Stephen Lau died from COVID-19 in March 2020.[13]
