From consumer complaints to confusion to the software problems, Google is seeing it all. But this one has come right out of the blue.
From what we read, it seems like Nexusone is being sued for copyright violations.
Now this one starts with Philip K Dicks novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. This book was widely appreciated, and thence later made into a sci-fi movie called “Blade Runner” having Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer in the lead, which again was a enormous hit among the sci-fi movie fans. If you aint the one and haven’t heard about the movie, the deal here is that one of the main characters played by Rutger Hauer was called Nexus-6. See the connection!
Although at the launch of the phone Google did state that the name of the phone has no connection with the work of Philip Dick and stated “It was being used in its original sense, as a place where things converge”.
But Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of Dick feels otherwise and has reportedly stated to the press, “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.”
She has reacted strongly in the press. Below are few of her statement in various media:
“Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“We were never consulted, no requests were made, and we didn’t grant any sort of permissions,” she told the New York Times.
While Motorola had bought the rights to use Droid for its Android phone from George Lucas, writer and producer of Star Wars films. Well it remains to be seen if Dick’s estate will get a fat paycheck or else in court they will have to prove that Google is using a name that is in no way associated with the phone or that its trading off the goodwill’ associated with the killer cyborgs.
Only time will tell how Google deals with this one, but with Android and Nexus1 I can certainly see things converging.
Via Newlaunches & Guardian
she only wants to mint money..getting inspired by Motorola paying for Droid.i havent even heard of the movie but her ccase seems valid enough
Google has always followed this policy “takes first and then deals with the fallout later”
This isn’t the first time Dick’s work has been abused, some of the film adaptions have sucked. For such a great novelist and icon of the twentieth century’s science fiction fan he should be recognised for this.