"A Flash of Genius": Innovation, Novelty and Blinking Wipers

The movie "A flash on genius" was on my must-see list for a while. I finally watched it this week-end and have really enjoyed it.
The movie traces the true story of Dr. Robert (Bob) Kearns professor of electrical engineering and the inventor of what is known Today as the "intermittent wipers".
Intermittent wipers enables car drivers to adjust the speed of windshield wipers based on the intensity of the rain.
In the movie, Dr. Kearns goes to court against Ford Motor Company for patent infringement and chooses to represent himself in court.
A defining moment of the case, in my opinion, happens when Ford lawyers bring to the witness stand a professor of electrical engineering to assess and comment on the "novelty" of the electronic circuit board that Bob Kearns designed to control the intermittent wipers.
The expert witness states then thal all components used in that circuit: transistor, capacitor and variable resistor were well known and available in electronic catalogs. All what Bob Kearns did was to arrange them in a different way (layout) on his control board. He concludes his testimony by stating that he would not call such a different arrangement of elements "invention".
To counter that statement, Bob Kearns brings in the famous novel written by Charles Dickens "The Tale of Two Cities" and reads couples sentences from the first page of the story before asking the expert witness:
Did Mr. Dickens invent any of the words he used in his novel?
The answer naturally comes as: No. Bob Kearns continues as he asks:
Do you think Mr. Dickens invented any of the words he used in his novel?
Is not it likely thal all the words used in that novel would be found in any English languauge dictionary?
Bob Kearns concludes: All what Charles Dickens did was to arrange the words available in English languauge in a specific sequence to write his novel. Can we then say that Charles Dickens did not come with any thing new??
Point made Dr. Kearns, in a very eloquent and convincing way.
When inventors innovate and come with new ideas, they rarely create their inventions from nothing! Guided by their vision, they use their expertise, domaine knowledge and many pre-existing tools to create innovation and novelty.