Wouldn't you know it? Yesterday we mourned the recent lack of interesting happenings in the world of Apple, and the signal had barely left our studios before Steve decided to make us look bad. Faithful viewer Tony Misasi alerted us to Apple Legal's latest exciting foray into the wild and woolly world of intellectual property litigation, and this time it's not about cheesy-looking iMac knockoffs. A two-sentence company press release is short on details, but paints the broad strokes: "Apple today filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court for Santa Clara County, California against an unknown individual who has posted Apple's trade secret information on the Internet." In other words, the War on Rumors has escalated, and Apple's taking the battle to the courtroom. Hold on tight, because this could get ugly.

Of particular dramatic note is the curious fact that Apple is suing an unknown individual. When reading about the suit in the original Reuters bulletin, we assumed that "unknown" meant "unknown to Reuters"-- in other words, "known to, but undisclosed by, Apple." But as faithful viewer Alex was quick to point out, it's even weirder than that; Apple honestly doesn't know who the culprit is. The company has indeed filed a lawsuit against a "John Doe." We were originally going to assure you all that the target of the suit isn't anyone at AtAT, but hey, since Apple doesn't even know whom it's suing, how can we be sure? It could be anyone. It could be your grandmother! Quick, tell her to get out of the country!

Luckily, sites such as MacNN and Think Secret have unearthed all kinds of tasty details missing from Apple's terse statement. At this stage, all available evidence points to Apple's target being someone who posted "images of the Apple Pro Mouse and dual-processor G4 machines to rumor-based forums." Which rumor-based forum? Try not to die of shock; the Vegas odds are favoring AppleInsider's. It seems that a member of that posting board named "Worker Bee" did, in fact, post Pro Mouse and dual G4 pictures to the forum and a couple of GeoCities web pages, which have since been pulled down following the filing of the lawsuit. Furthermore, Yahoo! has reportedly been subpoenaed by Apple in an attempt to discover the identity of the person who opened the GeoCities accounts. So Grandma's in the clear, unless she's been frequenting the AI message boards for the past few months.

Then again, we're not all out of the woods yet; Apple's suit reportedly claims that up to twenty-four accomplices may have assisted John Doe 1 in the alleged trade secret violation. These accomplices are also "unknown," and therefore are referred to in the suit as "John Does 2 through 25." (This case already has more Does than Bambi's extended family.) But Apple's legal eagles are hard at work extracting secret identities from subpoenaed ISP info, so real names may be surfacing shortly. Bottom line? If innocent ol' Grandma asked you for help troubleshooting her dialup connection, you may very well be John Doe 15. Expect a summons shortly.