From a link on Maccentral pointing towards an article on businessweek today:
[The author] raise[s] the question now because some small developers are crying foul. They're accusing Apple of freely copying third-party programmers' innovations into its own software. "Apple should work with independent developers, rather than taking everything in the house," Rob McNair-Huff, publisher of the popular Mac Net Journal Web site, wrote recently.

McNair-Huff has a legitimate beef... Take one of [Apple's] upcoming programs, iChat, to be released in late summer as part of the OS X upgrade. As described by Apple's own press release, it sounds strikingly familiar to Adam Iser's Adium chat software.

Give me a break. All this guy did was wrap up a command line generic AIM client with an Aqua interface (aka, for you non-Mac users, a "GUI on OS X"). That's not a legitimate beef. There's already gaim, Everybuddy, and at least two other AIM clones I've installed at some point along the way but never really used.

These AIM clones are a dime a dozen, and AOL doesn't particularly care for them. That some dude spent a few weeks' spare time making another doesn't make me feel bad that Apple made a new one designed specifically for Mac users (you'll notice the crazy people have heads with word bubbles, etc. Madness). They aren't the same app. Not even close. I'm afraid Mr. Iser's program isn't innovative enough for him to expect much of a return from Apple.

Now I would be a little more aggravated if I was the guy who wrote Watson. Apple grabbed this up nearly verbatim to shove into Sherlock 3 in its next release of OS X (details on that release, but not Sherlock 3, here). The big difference? Adium is a free, quick hack. Watson is $30 shareware.

The bottom line is that AIM clones are a dime a dozen. If Apple wants to make iChat come with the OS, let 'em. People who like heads with word balloons are either Electric Company age or not savvy enough to search on the web for something better anyhow (which Adium seems to be, though I've naturally never tried iChat) -- and AOL's OS X AIM client is an unbelievably mad processor hog. But Apple's robbing of Watson, if that's really what happened, is a little underhanded.

The point of the article is well taken; its "Exhibit A" in evidence isn't.