By now many people are sick and tired of the courtroom battles going on in the mobile industry. In particular, some people feel Apple is overreaching with its patents and intellectual property and, in the process, Apple is stifling competition. If you think Apple vs Samsung or Apple vs HTC or Apple vs Motorola is ridiculous, you will just love this one: Apple is suing  online Polish grocery store A.pl because of its name.

A.pl is a Polish grocery store that operates in the order-online-we-deliver-to-your-home business; any resident of Poland can order groceries and whatnot from http://a.pl and have it delivered right to his or her home. (The name of the company is A.pl and it operates the website http://a.pl.) Apple apparently feels the name ‘A.pl’ is too similar to ‘Apple’ because it has filed a lawsuit against A.pl.

According to a filing with the Polish Patent Office, Apple claims A.pl is is using “Apple’s reputation” and wants A.pl’s trademark terminated in Poland. As PC Mag points out, Apple is also attacking A.pl’s subsidiary fresh24.pl for a green circle with teardrop-shaped leaf logo that Apple claims is too similar to Apple’s apple.

Initially it may seem like Apple has somewhat of a justified claim. After all, in the day and age of URL shorteners, some could think the URL A.pl is a URL shortener belonging to Apple (whoever thinks this obviously never visited http://a.pl). However, when one considers the facts that .pl is the country domain extension for Poland and Apple has no proprietary rights to the letter A, the idiotic nature of this lawsuit is revealed. Plus, A.pl and Apple are in completely different industries so only a buffoon would mix the two.

Really, Apple?

[via PC Mag]