The New York Times website featured an interesting piece yesterday about the origin of the Nexus One name. It's no secret that Motorola licensed the name "Droid" from Star Wars' creator George Lucas, but now, claims that Google is using the "Nexus" name without prior authorization have surfaced. Isa Dick Hackett, whose father wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" claims that Google stole the "Nexus" name from her father's novel.
The connections between the phone and the book are impossible to ignore, and many bloggers have picked up on it. The story is about Androids, and includes a bounty hunter who's tasked with tracking down Nexus-6 cyborgs, who are the sixth generation of Nexus robots. The similarities seem to imply that the Nexus One name was more than a coincidence. It seems like a near certainty that the name Google chose was inspired by Mr. Dick's story, though permission to use the name was never granted.
Hackett, it seems, would have been open to the idea of granting permission to Google. "My father was a big fan of technology. It's certainly something we would have been happy to discuss and interested in exploring. They only needed to reach out." However, now that the deed is done and Google has filed for a patent on the name, a lawsuit seems much more likely. Hackett is currently exploring her options with her legal team.
You can check out the book on, none other than, Google Books.
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