Hey, speaking of lawsuits, Apple's involved in another legal battle right now-- and believe it or not, this one's actually not music-related. We're in luck, too, because while we've got this whole French streak going, here, we've actually gotten some complaints from viewers who like the new international flavor AtAT's taken on this week, but aren't crazy about our apparent obsession with the French. To that end howzabout we link to an article in German about Apple's legal tussles in China? Hoooooo-weeeee, that's some darn fine internationalizin' if we do say so ourselves! We feel just like the United Nations or something! (Say, does this mean the government will ignore us, too? At least until after tax day? 'Cause, you know, that'd be pretty sweet.)

So here's what's going down: German publication Spiegel Online reports that Apple is having some trouble trademarking its logo for use on clothing over in China. At least, that's what we could glean from the ever-popular Babelfish auto-translation, because the only thing worse than our French is our German. All that remains of German I from senior year in high school is the single phrase we try to learn in every language: "Ich habe einen Bleistift," or "I have a pencil." Looking back, it might actually have been a lot wiser to learn something more useful, like "Where is the bathroom?" or "Take my wallet but please leave me unharmed," since we never actually do have a pencil, and even if we did, we doubt many people would much care, in Germany or elsewhere. Live and learn.

Um. Right. So anyway, about that whole logo thing.

For a less-baffling rundown of the details, we turn to Macworld UK's English article-- but in keeping with our theme, it's the Queen's English, so it's still foreign by American standards. Apparently the problem is that there's a famous clothing manufacturer in China called Guangdong Apples, whose registered logo is kindasorta similar to Apple's, only without the bite taken out of it and with a stem-and-leaf where the leaf would be. The Beijing Intermediate People's Court (suppose they have a Chinese equivalent of Judge Wapner and Rusty the Bailiff?) turned down Apple's request to trademark its logo for use on clothing, unswayed by Apple's insistence that the ol' Apple-with-a-bite is "a famous one," ruling that Apple's logo isn't different enough from that of Guangdong Apples, and the Chinese company was there first.

The upshot is that Apple (our Apple) can't trademark its own logo for use on clothing in China, which, frankly, we wouldn't have expected to be that much of a problem, unless Apple plans on opening a few dozen Chinese Apple retail stores and needs to print up free t-shirts to give away at the grand openings. Nevertheless, Apple reportedly alleges that Guangdong Apples is making "illegal profits" by aping its world-famous logo, and has "launched legal action against China's trademark appraisal committee" in order to fix the problem, apparently in advance of some huge secret diversification into a new line of "softwear." Who knew?