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Nexus One Name Irks Philip K. Dick's Estate
RevWaldo writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the estate of Philip K. Dick says the name of Google's new smartphone infringes on the famous character name from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr. Dick, states Google has its 'Android system, and now they are naming a phone "Nexus One." It's not lost on the people who are somewhat familiar with this novel... Our legal team is dealing head-on with this.'"
If they didn't trademark it, there would be hundreds of Chinese made rip-offs in months. You clearly don't understand how trademarks work.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/android
It's a real product by Rösch Company: Linux. Micro&Soft For some reason, I would call toilet paper "Micro&Soft" :-P
True, but it's not even the same name. The book refers to the replicants as "Nexus-6" models. This is the "Nexus One" phone.
Would an average person think that the estate of Philip K. Dick endorses the phone based on that? Highly, highly unlikely.
The
The book refers to several of the Nexus series, although the main focus is on the latest generation. Oh, and the book doesn't call them replicants at all, that term was invented by the movie. The book calls them androids or andys.
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their greed feeds off the greed of the PKD silverspoons.
I think that if you'd bother to read about his life you'll find that PKD kids were not "silver spoons." In his lifetime, Dick won awards but was plagued by financial difficulties. Only one film based on a work of his was ever greenlighted during his lifetime, and he died four months before it was released. The financial success of PKD works is all post-mortem, and is largely the result of his estate successfully licensing his works as his works have become marketable later on.
In other words, the heirs you criticize were not born with silver spoons in their mouths; they were born to a writer who was unknown outside of the science fiction community, who hadn't had mainstream success, and took loans from other writers just to get by. His children did not grow up in wealth, living off a successful, creative father who sent them to boarding school, etc. It is because there have been films since Blade Runner, that the works of PKD have enjoyed success outside of the pages of science fiction magazines.
This doesn't make the PKD heirs' lawsuit right in this case, but you can't put them in the same boat as say the heirs of the Walt and Roy O. Disney, both of whom were ridiculously financially successful within their own lifetime and were able to pass on that fortune to their children, such as the late Roy E. Disney.
Yes, another example is the Domino Sugar trademark infringement suit against Domino's Pizza. The court found in favor of Domino's Pizza (i.e., not infringing). And this was a case of two food products. The key test is whether the same name use is "likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive." If a court thinks there's little chance of confusing pizza and sugar, I think Google has a pretty good chance that someone won't confuse a fictional book character and a telephone.