It's just a serialized and retrieved transport. The key, as with the transporter, is in the Heisenberg compensators -- I have a feeling they may well be patentable under any system that allows patents.
You'd be hard pressed to invalidate a utility patent with some footage from a movie, because it probably wouldn't be "enabling." But design patents just claim ornamental designs.
Some footage could be considered "enabling". For instance if I wanted to patent "Slingshot-launched rideable rocket as a means for catching roadrunners" there'd probably be prior art.
It can certainly happen before patents are approved. A description in Robert Heinlein's book, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was used as prior art to prevent a patent on water beds.
So the solution to patent trolling is to have more hard sci-fi that describes mechanisms of upcoming future technology in detail, thus preventing companies from patenting them?
Regular [Utility] Patents can be invalidated by any prior disclosure of the invention, it doesn't matter what form that disclosure is in provided it is rendered in public (and, with a few more conditions, not part of a recognised trade show in the US).
There's a UK patent application, a doggy doorbell IIRC, that was refused based on a British children's comic called the Beano anticipating it.
