Chalk up another "victory" for Apple's increasingly-vigorous legal team. The target this time? Simon Jones and his newly-redesigned MacCards site. If that sounds familiar, it should; MacCards was an e-card service similar to (and pre-dating) Apple's own iCards service. You'd pick a graphic, write a quick note, and email it off to a friend. All of Simon's offerings were Mac-related, and therefore catered to the Mac community, who appreciated his work in bringing some more Mac visibility to the Internet. But Apple was not amused-- and shut MacCards down shortly after iCards debuted, by threatening legal action for trademark infringement.

Now, we fully understand that Apple has to enforce its trademarks or risk losing them entirely, but after hearing from Simon we have to admit that the company was probably more than a trifle brusque in the way it handled the situation. One would think that Apple would at least be courteous to obvious fans of its products who work hard to give the company a bit of free advertising, but reportedly courtesy isn't high on the list of priorities in Apple's legal department. So it's with more than a twinge of regret that we noted an article at Macworld UK about the cancellation of the reborn MacCards.

See, Simon's idea was to relaunch the site and avoid using any of Apple's trademarks or copyrighted photos. Instead, he asked Mac-friendly illustrators "to donate original artwork with a humorous Apple theme." Unfortunately, Simon chose as the new MacCards logo a modified version of Apple's own logo, tweaked into a heart shape. Apple objected, again threatened legal action, and refused to speak with Simon directly, opting instead only to communicate via legal negotiations. Tsk, tsk. Simon, having no legal fund to go head-to-head with Cupertino's Finest, once again decided to kill the site. C'est la vie. At least Simon's iCards parody, EyeCards, is still up and running and offering the dullest e-cards on the 'net. Or, uh, would that be second-dullest?