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

It appears someone is living up to their name.

[Dog-Cow]

The children are dicks. In the vernacular sense of the term.

I hope that if this makes it to trial that the judge slaps them with billions in fines for bringing a frivolous suit.

For even thinking they have a case, they deserve to lose every penny they own. I truly hope someone just shoots them.

Re:Seriously though...

[Internal Modem]

Nexus-6 is in the dictionary?

How were you marked insightful?

Re:Estate

[NiteShaed]

By continuing to operate the family is still providing new services

Do they? They didn't create the hotels, or the company that operates the hotels, and Conrad died. Why not have the entire thing "revert to the public domain" when he died? Make it a non-profit corporation, after all, his family is literally engaging in "rent seeking behavior", sitting on the company that Conrad Hilton created and collecting rent from the people who stay there. Let Paris start her own hotel-chain and build it up from the ground, instead of this parasitic behaviour of living off the work of her family.

Of course, all of this is absurd, I side with the creator of a given work. If and when you create something of value, you're free to give it to the public if you want, but the idea that nobody else can decide that for themselves arrogant.

In the case of art and literature, why do we have to separate physical and intellectual property? I'd argue that the intellectual property is far more personal, and far more "wholly owned" by a creator of a given work than a building that was built by someone whose chief contribution to the project was money. The fact that the creator of this work chooses to share it with the public for a price doesn't change the fact that it's his work, and if he wishes to leave a legacy for his family after he's gone, who are we, as a society, to tell him he can't, and that once he's gone everything he's done has to be given away for free? If we don't want to pay the price to read those works, then we can simply not read them.