Gosh, is it really 10-Q time again already? If you're the type who happens to think that poring through 86 pages of SEC-mandated dry financial jargon and tables with headings like "Diluted Earnings Per Common Share Before Accounting Change" constitutes light 'n' breezy summer reading, by all means, download the PDF and knock yourself out. If, on the other hand, you're about as likely to read a full quarterly 10-Q filing as you are to staple two carrots to your forehead and go charging at a bull, we suggest that you take the easy way out: read the summary thoughtfully provided by MacMinute, who's gone to the trouble to extract most of the more dramatic revelations detailed by Apple this quarter.

From our perspective, though, even most of the summary points are pretty dry-- percentage sales increases we've already heard about at the quarterly results conference call, that sort of thing. The one bit that really got our motors revving, though, was the list of lawsuits Apple is newly facing or has recently settled. For one thing, that TIBCO ("TIBCO!!") lawsuit over the "Rendezvous" trademark has been settled. It also seems that Apple's getting sued again over this iPod battery goofiness-- in New York, no less, which was also the setting for that Neistat Brothers bit of vandalism. (What's the deal with people from the Empire State not being able to keep their iPods running? Ours will be hitting their three-year mark come Christmas and we've got no battery complaints.) On top of that, Apple was also sued for patent infringement because of the light-up keyboard in some of its PowerBooks; that suit's now been settled, too.

The big one, though, is also described over at CNET: Virgin Mega is apparently just as desperate to license Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system as RealNetworks was-- but instead of cracking the format without permission like Real did, Virgin decided it would be more fun to sue Apple in a French court for "wrongfully refusing to license FairPlay." Now, we're not familiar with French law, but "wrongfully refusing"? What, did Apple forget to say "sorry" when it said no? We can't imagine that Apple's share of the downloadable music or portable music player markets constitutes a monopoly, but maybe France's antitrust laws are a lot stricter than U.S. ones or something. Who knows? All we can say for sure is that now Apple has to contend with people suing it for the heinous act of not licensing something it invented and owns. We figure Apple France should countersue for not allowing Apple to put the Virgin logo on iPods. Sure, why would anyone want to, but it's the principle of the thing, right?

Indeed, we're amazed that Apple gets anything done at all, given all the legal activity it has to contend with. The music-related stuff, in particular, seems positively overwhelming; in addition to the iPod battery lawsuits and the Virgin thing we just mentioned, don't forget about the Eminem lawsuit, the Beatles lawsuit, and the Freeny lawsuit. "What Freeny lawsuit?" you ask. Why, the Freeny lawsuit that Apple just settled, as described by The Register, we answer. Some company called E-Data owns a patent on "a system and method of distributing [commercial] digital content over electronic and wireless networks," which it claimed that Apple was violating with the iTunes Music Store. Rather than duke it out in court, Apple apparently feels that it was best to cut its losses and license this so-called "Freeny Patent." So that's that, as far as Freeny is concerned.

Okay, we admit it: this whole thing was just a setup so we could say "Freeny" a couple dozen times. Freeny. FREENY. Freenyfreenyfreenyfreenyfreeny.

Makes us happy.

(Freeny.)