A vibrating sex toy accessory for the iPod appears to have got Apple's legal team all hot and bothered.
Adult store Ann Summers, seller of the "iGasm", told the British tabloid News of the World that Apple's legal team had threatened it with legal action over its advertising posters.
"Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum and bass track or chill with the ambient classic," reads a marketing brief for the £30 ($72) iGasm, which plugs into any music player and vibrates in sync with the beat.
Apple says the iGasm ads, which show a female silhouette listening to an iPod with a cord snaking into her underwear, are a rip-off of its own iPod ads.
"We hope this request to remove it [the ads] immediately will prevent us having to consider further action," News of the World quoted a legal letter sent by Apple's lawyers as saying.
Apple refused to comment on the issue and Ann Summers did not respond to comment requests.
But it's not the first time Apple has had a run-in with iPod sex toy makers - in November last year it was reported that Apple scuttled a Japanese company's attempts to bring to market a device called gPod.
Apple said the gPod, which has features similar to the iGasm, infringed on its "pod" trademarks.
At least two other companies, both American, sell vibrating iPod sex toys - iBuzz and OhMiBod.
Advertising on the iBuzz website is similar to that used for iGasm, but the company behind the device, Love Labs, did not respond to requests asking if Apple had threatened it with legal action as well.
Suki, founder of OhMiBod, worked at Apple for 8 years and said in an email interview that, since starting her new company, she has tried to steer clear of Apple's trademarks.
"Some companies [like the ones being sued by Apple] think that the PR generated by this is funny or can drive sales," she said.
"We are happy to ride the coattails of the iPods success [like many other iPod accessory companies] but do not feel that negative PR for Apple brings us anything but 'badwill'."
OhMiBod has an Australian online store where it sells its vibrating toy for $119.
Justin Lewis, the owner of the Australian store, said he had sold over 2000 units since the product launched here in November last year.
But devices that translate iPod music into vibrations aren't the only high-tech sex toys around.
Internet-connected sex devices, part of a field called "teledildonics", are personalising cyber sex as they can be controlled remotely via a computer.
Teledildonics is a growing market in the US but it is yet to make a splash in Australia.
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Originally Posted by nn_step
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