I understand it was meant as a rhetorical question, but I think there's a plausible response to that. People looked at the behaviour of many large companies wh

I understand it was meant as a rhetorical question, but I think there's a plausible response to that. People looked at the behaviour of many large companies when they had to deal with IP infringement, and the most memorable examples were when they waited until near completion before launching a legal procedure (I've seen that mostly from the movie industry). From this behaviour, they then try to guess an ulterior motive. The issue is that they fail to notice that a procedure on IP infringement is more likely to succeed when the supposed infringing work is closer to its source of inspiration: suing too early is a recipe of failure. It's clear that phrased as it was, it painted Apple as an intrinsically bad actor. And you reacted to that. It is probably closer to the truth that it is in Apple's interest to protect its market using all available legal means. If this project turns out to be a threat, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect their legal team to make a move. But I don't think either that they are naive enough to believe that a success would dissuade the rest of the world from trying again.