Some moviegoers will clap after a really good film. At MJR, a Southeast Michigan theater chain with ten locations, patrons clap before the movie.

This bout of audience participation happens during a trailer for the theater that reminds moviegoers not to talk or text during the show. Right after a singer belts, “It’s more than just a movie, it’s a big night out!” some audience members clap three times in a row. This happens two separate times during the song.

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Mark Lemley, a Stanford professor who teaches intellectual property law says inventions like the telephone, lasers and calculus were independently created by multiple people around the same time.

“But science is a little bit easier to explain than this, I think, because there is only one calculus. You’re figuring it out but it’s not as though you’re just creating it out of whole cloth,” says Lemley.