According to AppleInsider Nicholas Woodhams, an Apple iPod repair shop owner from Michigan, has found himself at the wrong end of the Apple legal machine.

Apple has apparently filed a lawsuit which claims misuse of the iPod trademark.

Actually, that is not all Apple claims. The iPod owning giant also accuses Woodhams of allegedly 'manipulating' Apple in order to get free replacement iPods. If that were not enough, the triple whammy is completed by another allegation of conning Apple into repairing iPods which were out of warranty.

However, where Woodhams is probably on the most dodgy of legal grounds is with regard to that trademark misuse charge. Buried within a nine page lawsuit, Apple says that the repair guy was asked to stop using the iPod name way back in 2006 as he had never been given permission to use it in the first place.

Apple say that he agreed to a deal in which he would phase the use of 'ipodmechanic' out by January last year, an stop using the web domain a coupe of months later.

Although Apple say none of these things happened, I note that the ipodmechanic.com URL is now resolved to imechanic.com instead. That said, the resulting webpage has an iPod Mechanic banner and the phrase is repeated throughout the site. So I guess they have a point.

While neither Apple nor the ipodmechanic seem to be saying anything in public about the lawsuit at this point, Apple does see the accusations as being deliberate and is asking for 'triple damages' as well as the disposal of that ipodmechanic domain and name usage.