Three suits, no waiting; it's a litigation hat trick for Apple regarding those iMac knock-offs. First they sued Future Power when they unveiled the ePower, which means that Future Power's currently-listed availability date of "early September 99" may be more than a little optimistic. Next, Apple tackled emachines, who took the stealth approach with their eOne (which suddenly appeared on Circuit City shelves before an Apple lawsuit could stop it). And now, according to a CNET article, Apple's taken on Sotec, the Japanese company that really makes the eOne-- which they sell as the "e-one" overseas. (Now there's innovation; emachines apparently couldn't even come up with their own iMac ripoff, so they just resell Sotec's here in the U.S.)

Apple filed this latest lawsuit in a Tokyo court and seeks a "provisional injunction" to block sales, alleging that the e-one "copied the industrial design of the award-winning iMac." According to the article, Sotec's e-one is "a hit" with Japanese consumers, so it could certainly threaten the iMac's success over there. Then again, we don't know what exactly constitutes a "hit," and we're a little hesitant to take the article's word for it, since in one paragraph it states that the e-one has been available since July 27th, and in another it lists the date as July 21st. (Attention to detail is a lost art these days, it seems.)

For their part, Sotec claims that Apple's lawsuit is "not fair" because Sotec "developed the e-one using [their] own technology." And that's where semantics and translation issues come into play, because while the e-one may well have been developed using Sotec's technology, that doesn't mean they didn't illegally copy Apple's design while doing it. But that's up to a judge to decide. Meanwhile, we can only assume that Apple's amassing a worldwide army of lawyers ready to take arms against a sea of counterfeiters, all in an attempt to protect the iMac's honor and good name. And whether or not Apple wins, the suits may at least help get the word out that the iMac is the original and the others are the copycats. Now the only remaining question is whether or not the consumers will care...