Sosumi is one of the system sounds introduced in Apple Inc.'s Macintosh System 7 operating system in 1991, an extremely short sample of a xylophone, which gained notoriety in computer folklore as a cheeky response to a long-running Apple Corps v. Apple Computer trademark conflict. The sound has been included in all subsequent versions of Mac OS, including Mac OS X.
During the development of System 7, the two Apples concluded a settlement agreement from an earlier dispute when Apple added a sound synthesis chip to its IIgs machine. As a result, Apple Computer was prohibited from using their trademark on "creative works whose principal content is music".
When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were reviewed through Apple's legal department and they objected that the new system sound alert "chime" had a name that was "too musical", under the recent settlement. The creator of the new sound alerts for System 7 and the Macintosh Startup Sound, Jim Reekes, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and first quipped it should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on The Beatles' "Let It Be". When someone remarked that that would not pass legal's approval, he remarked "so sue me." After a brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound's name as sosumi (a homophone of "so sue me"), telling the legal department that the name was Japanese and had nothing to do with music.[1]
Sosumi exists as an inside joke on Apple Inc.'s website as the name of a CSS typographical style used for legal notices such as the copyright notice:
<div class="sosumi"> <p class="copyright">Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.</p> ...