Exhibit A, Woolworths newly redesigned logo, is on the left. Apple’s iconic apple logo is on the right. Not that similar at all, but the real issue, at least with Apple, is probably that Woolworths might expand its retail business into electronics and somehow threaten that lucrative iPod business.

“While we can’t rule [computers, musical players, or other devices] out, we haven’t got any plans at the moment,” said a Woolworths spokesman in a statement to AppleInsider.

To Apple’s credit, they’ve moved up from suing school systems to supermarket megachains. Bigger fish, and all that. [AppleInsider]

Psion PLC announces that Psion and Intel Corporation have settled the trade mark cancellation and infringement litigation brought in the Northern District of California relating to the ‘Netbook’ trademark registration.

The litigation has been settled through an amicable agreement under which Psion will voluntarily withdraw all of its trademark registrations for ‘Netbook’. Neither party accepted any liability. In light of this amicable agreement, Psion has agreed to waive all its rights against third parties in respect of past, current or future use of the ‘Netbook’ term.

They don’t say exactly what caused this change of heart, probably because saying “Intel gave us a stack of cash and told us to piss off” doesn’t sound very professional. [SlashGear via CrunchGear]

Tomas Norström, the judge who sentenced the Pirate Bay Four, was recently outed as a member of two copyright advocacy organisations, prompting rumblings about a mistrial.

Some Swedish attorneys believe that Norström’s membership of the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (where he is a board member) represent a full-on conflict of interest, a charge that, naturally, he denies. I won’t pretend to know whether or not these accusations constitute full-on shenanigans (legal term!) under Swedish law, but the fact that a juror on the case was dismissed for membership in the same organisations should raise a few eyebrows.

So, there’s a little conspiracy to mix in with your boiling indignation. Enjoy! [The Local—Thanks Jason, Buster, and John!]

Elan is a Taiwan-based touchpad manufacturer, best known for supplying the touchpads on several Eee PC models. And apparently they’ve got a well-leveraged patent position on multitouch tech: last year, Elan and touchpad giant Synaptics came to a cross-licensing agreement after an initial injunction in a similar lawsuit ruled in Elan’s favour. The case was settled out of court.

As of now it’s unclear what Elan is demanding, but it may be a last-ditch effort for a company struggling like so many other Chinese and Taiwanese OEM suppliers. But after their win over Synaptics, Elan is emboldened, thinking their legal position has some weight. Kind of like Afghanistan, maybe, in our little Cold War metaphor—the little fish that proves to be the graveyard of empires.

Whether Elan is being shadow controlled by Palm, or whether Palm execs are currently sending cases of thank-you champagne on the next container ship back to Taiwan, has yet to be verified. [NYTimes]

An excerpt from the letter says that “the term POD has also been adopted and used extensively in the marketplace by consumers as an abbreviation to refer to Apple’s IPOD player. The IPOD and POD marks indicate to consumers that a broad range of products, including portable electronic devices, computer software, and related goods and services bearing those marks and marks similar thereto originate from or are sponsored or endorsed by Apple.” Yeah, OK. It also states that the design of the stand infringes on Apple’s trademark because it looks like the new iMac designs.

Pivotal, the makers of the stand, obviously aren’t pleased with the letter. This seems like a Monster-Cable-style dick move from a big company to a small out (a small one that makes accessories for Apple’s products, no less), so hopefully it won’t go anywhere. [TUAW]

Overall, the closing arguments by the defence were the same ones they made the whole trial: they never hosted or transferred any illegal content, just acted as an innocent middleman. They compared themselves to Google and telephone lines.

They also claimed that up to 80% of the content on the site is legal, which seems like a highly dubious figure to me, but the boneheaded prosecution never countered with any figures of their own, so that’s the only stat we have.

As for the site itself, it was down on Monday due to a server outage. Luckily, there was Wi-Fi in the courtroom, allowing defendant Dredrik Neij to bring it back up from a laptop in the courtroom as his lawyer delivered closing arguments. Badass.

So what now? Well, the verdict is scheduled for April 17th, so we have some time to wait on this one. In the meantime? “I think we’re going to go party,” said defendant Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi. Oh, Pirate Bay. [Ars Technica]

The two main arguments that the prosecution made were that the folks behind The Pirate Bay were responsible for allowing piracy to happen and that they’re organised and rich.

As to the first point, prosecutor Hakan Roswall said that “a person who is holding someone’s coat while they assault someone else is complicit in the crime.”

And the prosecution repeatedly claimed that the people behind The Pirate Bay were pulling in $US1 million per year via ads, a claim the defence has roundly denied. Peter Sunde says that the “prosecution claims 64 adspaces on TPB. But there’s two to four. And they count the earned money on number of adspaces.” More to the point, he says this of the prosecutor: “The old bastard’s crazy.” Glad they’re keeping things civil!

Tomorrow, the defence makes its closing argument, and then this whole circus comes to a close. The prosecution is gunning for one year of jailtime, so we’ll see what happens. [Ars Technica]

How can you stand to mess with such obviously kind-hearted, sentimental and sweet copyright violators? Will the prosecution be able to sleep at night? [Torrent Freak]

When defendant Fredrik Neij was questioned regarding the relationship Oded Daniel, an advertiser, had with the technical aspects of the Pirate Bay, he assured the prosecution that Daniel was not involved. “No, he’s not good at that. He uses Windows, so…” said Neij. At which point all of the bloggers in the live feed room next door burst into laugher, which could be heard in the otherwise silent courtroom. Oh snap indeed.

So no huge legal developments, no run-ins with the prosecution over pizzas. Just another day in the life of the Torrent trial of the century.

But in other news, apparently the IFPI’s website (the international RIAA-like org who is the plaintiff in the case) has been the target of sympathetic Pirate Bay hackers. Bay founder Peter Sunde was quite adamant about putting a stop to this, understandably.

Oh, and if you want to know what it’s like inside the Bay’s bus, this video from inside will do just that. Bonus if you speak Swedish.

Until tomorrow! [Torrent Freak, Pirate Bay on Giz]