Something's Fishy About Lawyer Letter to Bloggers re iPhone Skin

Something's fishy about Apple's latest legal salvo against the blogosphere. Before everyone gets their knickers in a crunch - has anyone actually received a paper copy of this lawyer letter?

Apple has a history of harassing bloggers, and has now reportedly gotten really out of hand by having lawyers email cease and desist letters to bloggers who simply linked to a page they found offensive. What, they can't afford Fed Ex?

However, the lawyers, from mega-firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP, have their client's name wrong. The company, which was known as Apple Computer for its first 30 years, dropped the word "computer" from their name on January 9, 2007, coinciding with the introduction of the iPhone. But the post in question was posted on the 12th, and the letter was emailed on the 13th. I'm sure Apple uses a lot of different law firms, but wouldn't they tell them all that they'd officially changed their name?

This really makes me wonder if the email was for real since anyone can register any kind of name as their email. Sure sounds fishy to me.

The offending download page is here (the software has now been removed). Blogger Paul O’Brien simply linked to this download page and included a screenshot of the user interface and also received a cease & desist letter from Apple’s lawyers.

Mike Elgan at The Raw Feed: "Wow, they're going after bloggers who post screenshots of Windows Mobile interfaces that kinda sorta look like the iPhone UI? Boy, the iPhone better be profitable or Apple isn't going to be able to pay all these lawyers."

TechCrunch:
"I think this is all complete nonsense. If Apple wants to go after the guy that made the Windows Mobile skin that looks like the iPhone, fine. But to bully bloggers who are simply reporting on this is another matter."

Well, I didn't know that. But it is possible that the legal company in question is real and the claims are real. After all lawyers are people too, they make mistakes. I'm going to give this one some time to run before I call it all a hoax.

~Richard
My iPhone skins post