Google's Nexus One smartphone facing Blade Runner lawsuit?

by Stevie Smith - Dec 17 2009, 06:55

Despite the obvious industry whispers stirred up by Google’s recently announced first-party smartphone, which is presently being tested internally, it’s unlikely the Califonia-based search titan was expecting to be facing a (tenuous) lawsuit because of the handset’s rumoured name.

Specifically, while Google’s upcoming phone is currently being referred to as the Nexus One, the estate of science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick has announced that it is both “shocked and dismayed” about Google’s possible intellectual property infringement.

For those who don’t know, Philip K. Dick’s famous novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ (which later become Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner) is centred on a group of rogue replicant androids that are identified through the model designation Nexus-6.

It is this somewhat vague similarity that is not sitting well with Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett, who recently told the New York Times that: “In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel.”

However, while Dick’s estate appears primed and ready to take Google to task should its HTC-made smartphone arrive sporting the Nexus One moniker registered through the company’s patent and trademark filing, it seems somewhat unlikely any resulting legal action will stick.

For example, Dick certainly didn’t create the word Nexus to specifically describe his humanoid creations – not least because the Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the word back to 1663. Nexus, as we know it, happens to be derived from the Latin word ‘nectere’, meaning ‘to bind’ or ‘a connected group or series’, which clearly denotes why Dick chose it for his androids.

Similarly, the word Nexus has also been used in other existing forms – including an album release and a popular comic book publication – and Google could feasibly argue that the Nexus One is so named as it represents the first incarnation of ‘a connected group or series’ of Google-branded smartphones.

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