Battleangel

Yes, Apple, the corporation that allegedly is nothing like the moneygrubbing dark lords of Redmond. So much for the “good corporation” theory. Just in case you didn’t get it when it was revealed last month Apple managed the frankly astonishing feat of violating Chinese labour laws.

Market a product called “Profit Pod” that is completely unrelated to anything Apple has ever done or will ever do and you’ll get a foreboding nastygram courtesy of Apple’s lawyers.

Even if the product you make doesn’t look, smell, feel, or do anything remotely close to what an iPod does, and even if consumers can’t buy it on the shelves in a store, that apparently doesn’t mean Apple won’t release its legal dogs on you if the name of your product includes the letters P-O-D.

That’s exactly what’s happening to Dave and Carolee Ellison, owners of Mach 5 Products — a small, family operated business that makes games for arcades — the kind that either spit out tickets as a reward for your performance or the crane-oriented games where you take your chance at retrieving a stuffed animal or some other toy with a hand-operated crane.