Oh, thank heaven-- Apple has just issued a press release announcing that it and Sorenson Media have settled their legal differences and now everybody's playing nicely on the playground again. We don't need to tell you just how much of a relief this is to us here at the AtAT compound, where we've been plagued by constant worry, chronic anxiety, and near-terminal insomnia over this lawsuit ever since it was filed last whenever ago. We've literally had to go on medication to treat the bleeding ulcers we've suffered in the wake of this gutwrenching legal struggle, but now the suit is settled, the nightmare is over, and we can finally go back to living our normal lives.

Right after we ask one little question.

Um, exactly what lawsuit was this, now?...

Oh, come on, don't look at us like that. Fine, so we may have embellished a little about the sleeplessness and the gaping holes in our stomach linings and actually knowing even the teensiest smidgen about what Apple and Sorenson were slapping each other for, or indeed that they were slapping each other at all. But cut us a little slack, here; we've done a bit of digging, and it turns out that news of the original suit's filing broke at the end of April-- when the entire AtAT staff was sitting around in a hospital, waiting for one of us to pop out of another one of us.

Anyway, after a slog through MacCentral's archives, we think we're pretty much up to speed on this little drama thread now: Apple paid $4.5 million to Sorenson for exclusive rights to use Sorenson's video codec in QuickTime; Sorenson then licensed an arguably similar technology to Macromedia; Apple sued Sorenson for violating the exclusivity clause in the contract; Sorenson then countersued Apple for kicking up a ruckus and thereby harming its business. And now the resolution, according to a Bloomberg article, is that Sorenson can indeed license its technology to Macromedia-- now that somebody probably threw a wad of cash at somebody else. If money did change hands, no one's talking about who paid whom and how much.

Whatever. All we know is that the lawsuits are over, everybody's satisfied, and we can finally fall asleep at night without sobbing into our pillows about Apple and Sorenson not getting along. Or at least we can stop lying about it, which is the next best thing.