Dick Family Threatens to Sue Google

Is the name of Google’s new Nexus One phone sufficiently similar to the Nexus 6 cyborgs from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to warrant a lawsuit by Philip K. Dick’s heirs?

The late author’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett thinks so, according to a report in the London Telegraph. The family has sent Google a letter demanding the company cease using the name.  

Google responds that it has merely named a phone after a common word that means “a place where things converge” — a choice of name unrelated to the novel.

But Isa Dick Hackett contends:

“Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later… In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel. People don’t get it. It’s the principle of it. It would be nice to have a dialogue. We are open to it. That’s a way to start.”

[Thanks to Moshe Feder and “Natty Bumpo” for components of this story. And no, I don’t know why “Natty” needs to use a pseud…]

2 thoughts on “Dick Family Threatens to Sue Google

  1. Who knows? It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Phil Dick’s novel isn’t all that famous, after all, not even *in* fandom.

    On the other hand, Google has a rep for behaving as though all intellectual property was as free as though it were on the internet, or something… which, come to think of it…

    Obviously this is a job for lawyers. I can hear them salivating already.

    One thing to keep in mind though. PKD is dead, and none of this is going to benefit him, mainly Google or his many divorced wives.

  2. The London Telegraph article states: “The family says the use of the name Nexus One is a trademark violation”

    A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office (http://uspto.gov/) for the word NEXUS returns 208 live records, of which many are just the single word.

    This could be interesting.

    IANAL.

    This could be very Phil Dickian.

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