See anything familiar in there? Okay, it can be hard to spot on Youtube, but Twitter has been buzzing about the fine print on Verizon’s latest run at the iPhone: “DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.”
Lucasfilm isn’t exactly a stranger to cell phone companies, but I wouldn’t expect much involvement besides what we see here… At least not yet.
That’s awesome. Side note: Lucasfilm should make cell phones that look like comlinks.
The ones that were made from the late-90’s razors? Uhh, no.
I’d much rather go for the coms we saw in A New Hope. Blue-tooth ear-pieces come standard, and all you need is the ability to use a tiny, tiny keypad.
Yet Lucasfilm’s done nothing to challenge the use of “droid” in popular sf media–used, as in SW, to mean “robot” instead of “android”–for many years. , from at least ROBOCOP onward.
Ah, but there was the whole Battledroids/Battletech thing from the 80s…
“Droid” was also used in Alien. I don’t think they had to get George’s permission for that, so there is probably a lot more connection with Lucas in these phones.
Passing references are one thing, but this time it’s being used as an actual product name with all the associated promotion. (It wouldn’t shock me if Verizon found out because they were trying to trademark it themselves.) They probably figured better to be safe and license it than be sorry and risk a high-profile lawsuit they could very well lose.