Bad news for Apple today as the company has been made the target of two new lawsuits – one over restraint of trade and one over a product defect.
In the first, Apple has been sued by the creators of the Word-A-Day calendar series over the Word of the Day screen saver in Leopard.
“Apple has basically just driven us out of business, Artemus Johnson, president of the Word-A-Day Company said. “I have kids to feed. A mortgage. I actually have a Mac on lease! It’s not fair.
“No one’s going to buy those little tear-off calendars this Christmas! My wife is going to leave me! Aaaah!”
In a separate suit, Apple is being sued over the iPhone’s screen’s inability to stay free of finger blemishes. The primary plaintiff is one Smudgy McSmudgman, a Trenton, New Jersey businessman.
“According to my client,” said lawyer Greg Delacorte, “his iPhone is practically unreadable, as it is covered in a layer of crusty fingerprints.”
Delacorte did allow that McSmudgman does have particularly porous fingers and a penchant for eating sticky sweets while reading the Sunday newspaper.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Delacorte said, “but the court documents are also a mess.”
“We’re confident that we will prevail in court,” said Apple general counsel Daniel Cooperman. “Our sources indicate that McSmudgman is incapable of refraining from noisily eating fudge with his bare hands in the courtroom. That won’t look good in front of a jury.”
Apple stock went down, then up, then down and then up again on the news.