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.'"

Comments

Fascinating moderation

[bradley13]

Some copyright attorney must be reading /.

As of a few seconds ago there were 30 replies, of which four or five said that the heirs should no longer be profiting from the copyrights, since Philip K. Dick is long dead. All of those posts have been marked "troll".

Would our budding copyright attorney like to explain this? Guess what: "troll" is not a substitute for "disagree".

In related news...

[spywhere]

...Isaac Asimov's bloated corpse is suing over the Japanese robot named Asimo.

Re:I Actually Side with Dick's Estate

[Rikiji7]

there's also osx!

Corporate Darwinism

[zuki]

Without wanting to add too much to the anti-copyright vituperations, has anyone considered how difficult it must truly be for a lawyer sensing a great case such as this one, with hundreds of billable hours (regardless of the outcome) to refrain themselves from telling their clients that serving papers to one of the planet's largest corporate behemoths is the only option, when in reality they pretty much know that they are guaranteed to lose the case but will still manage to milk the estate for plenty of money by going that route, and that this will be the closest they'll ever come to being 'cool with the in crowd' ?

How Darwinian! In that sense,they are taking the role of parasite, which as we all know is necessary for the ecosystem to function properly.

How about this...

[RevWaldo]

Free digital copy of "Blade Runner" with every Nexus One (director's cut, of course). Google gets to demo the phones' video chops and gets the coolness cred, PKD's heirs get a chunk of the royalties. Win-win.

Fuck the estate

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Bunch of god damn parasites. PKD is DEAD. In my view that leaves his work should be public domain. Is that the law? No, the law presently favours the leeches, the parasites, the lawyers. I'm no big fan of Google as a company, but I say "go for it, Google". Fuck these people. PKD is dead. None of the people involved had anything to do with his writing or work or creativity. They are leeches existing at the pig trough of Imaginary Property rights. In a more just society they would be burned as devils.

Re:I Actually Side with Dick's Estate

[Svartalf]

Actually, the word "robot" may well have been first coined in a play written by Karl Capeck in 1927, in Russums Universal Robots (or R.U.R.)- even though Russum's robots would be more along the lines of the "androids" in Dick's story.

Nobody, not even Dick, asked around to see if they needed permission from Capek for that stuff.

Mainly because they didn't NEED it.

Heh... It's even more entertaining what they're doing here...

A TESS search, while not 100% conclusive, shows 41 differing uses of the word "Android" as a trademark or part thereof, with the first usage, though dead, going back to 1959, registered in 1962 as a branding of a medicine from the Brown Pharmaceutical Company- from the TESS database entry on it:

IC 005. US 018. G & S: COMBINATION OF TESTOSTERONE, THYROID, GLUTAMIC ACID AND THIAMINE HCI IN TABLET FORM. FIRST USE: 19590400. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19591100

Google seems to be the only registrant for "Nexus One"- but all THAT really is would be a combining of two common words to represent a branding of a phone. From Dictionary.com:

nexus /nkss/ :
–noun, plural nexuses, nexus.
1. a means of connection; tie; link.
2. a connected series or group.
3. the core or center, as of a matter or situation.
4. Cell Biology. a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.

one /'wuhn'/ :

–noun
10. the first and lowest whole number, being a cardinal number; unity.
11. a symbol of this number, as 1 or I.
12. a single person or thing: If only problems would come one at a time!
13. a die face or a domino face having one pip.
14. a one-dollar bill: to change a five-dollar bill for five ones.
15. (initial capital letter) Neoplatonism. the ultimate reality, seen as a central source of being by whose emanations all entities, spiritual and corporeal, have their existence, the corporeal ones containing the fewest of the emanations.

Simply put, there's really little to nothing for the Dick Estate to "protect" here- and I question the wisdom of the same to allow a batch of lawyers make themselves look the fool at their expense.