TigerDirect has Mother's Day sales on Canon cameras at its website. It also has a lawsuit in the hopper against Apple Computer, in response to Apple's choice of the nickname "Tiger" for the latest version of Macintosh OS X.

Now comes words of a non-lawsuit, from Web entrepreneur and professional football executive Bob Young. In response to TigerDirect's action,  Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com and owner of the Hamilton (Ontario) Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, calls the lawsuit "a load of codswallop," said Mr. Young.  "Nobody and no company should have the exclusive use of the word 'tiger.'"

Acting on his principles, Mr. Young has offered to license the Hamilton Tiger-Cats historical use of the word "Tiger" to Apple free of charge. He offers the following brief history lesson:

"The Hamilton Tigers Football Club was established in 1869 and prior to World War II, the team was known as the Tigers. The colors of yellow and black were well represented and the present philosophy of tough football was established in those early days In 1950, the Hamilton Tigers merged with the Hamilton Wildcats to become the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. "

"So, 136 years ago we were called The Tigers," exclaimed Mr. Young.  "If anyone owns the exclusive rights to the word "tiger" with that much history and tradition, it must  be us!"

Mr. Young's activities as CEO of Lulu.com may influence his thinking. The site, which offers self-publishing services, features the word "free" prominently on its home page. Clearly, Mr. Young is not about to change his stripes in the matter of Apple Tiger.

At presstime, there was no word from the Detroit Tigers baseball team, the Flying Tigers air-delivery service, the family of former boxing great Dick Tiger,or the family of A.A. Milne. Should we learn what a Tigger would do, we'll bounce it back to our readers.

This matter is presumably much less humorous to Apple Computer, which has endured a long and winding legal road with Apple Records over use of the word "apple" through much of its history.  Now with at least one other tiger stalking it, one can only hope for a felicitous conclusion.