There is an app for nearly everything these days, including mixing chocolate milk and spurring lawsuits. The two are combined in a suit The Hershey Co. is pursuing in federal court.

The intellectual property dispute involves Hershey's Chocolate Milk iPhone application distributed by the firm which lets users mix and "drink" a virtual glass of chocolate milk.

In a legal preemptive strike, The Hershey Co. is suing the Las Vegas-based software development company Hottrix LLC, seeking a court ruling that its app doesn't infringe on the copyright of a Hottrix app called iMilk.

Hottrix’s app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch also allows users to drink a virtual glass of milk, minus the chocolate syrup. According to court filings, Hottrix sent The Hershey Co. a letter in December, alleging copyright infringement and demanding withdrawal of the chocolate milk app.

Hottrix plans a counterstrike. Its California-based lawyer, Jason H. Fisher, said Thursday that he’ll file a counterclaim against The Hershey Co. for copyright infringement by Monday, the deadline federal Judge John E. Jones III has set for Hottrix to respond to the suit. “We are a mom and pop company that protects its intellectual property,” Fisher said.

Such legal battles would have been unthinkable only a few years ago since such technology didn’t exist.

Now apps are not just fun and sometimes corny novelties, but vital, perhaps even indispensable marketing tools. “They’ve become so important,” said Michael Coolsen, chairman of the marketing and management department at Shippensburg University’s John L. Grove College of Business. “You’re always looking for clever ways to get your brand out there.”

While The Hershey Co. is already well-known globally, the chocolate milk app and other such digital attention getters can only strengthen its stance among consumers, Coolsen said. “It’s brand-positioning strategy. You want to get your brand on everything you can,” he said of the explosion of product-related apps. “It’s not going to die down.”

The Hershey Co. app allows users to pour Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup into a glass of milk, mix it and even blow bubbles in the milk and drink it with an imaginary straw. Appropriate sounds accompany the bubble blowing and sipping.

The chocolate milk app is offered as a free download for iPhone users from Apple’s online app store. It was launched in October 2009, more than a year after iMilk came out, court filings show.

In its suit, The Hershey Co. claims there is no copyright infringement because its app was developed independently of iMilk and doesn’t use iMilk’s computer programming codes. “Although both reflect the idea of using an iPhone screen to create a virtual milk drink, the actual execution of the Hershey’s Chocolate Milk iPhone application is very different than that of the Hottrix applications,” the suit states.

The Hershey Co. contends that Hottrix can’t claim to have exclusive rights to such an elemental concept as creating an app to drink a virtual glass of milk.

In discussing the case on its website, Hottrix claims it is “unimpressed” by the suit and that officials of The Hershey Co. had approached Hottrix about programming a chocolate milk app.

Fisher said Hottrix was willing to discuss a licensing agreement, but The Hershey Company didn’t follow through. “It’s not the first time a huge corporation is trying to bully us,” Hottrix states on its site.

In 2008, Hottrix filed a $12.5 million federal lawsuit against Coors Brewing Co. It contended that Coors developed a virtual beer drinking app, iPint, that infringed on the copyright for an iBeer app developed earlier by Hottrix.

Fisher said the Coors suit ended with a confidential settlement. When the dispute arose, iPint was removed from the Apple store in the U.S. and hasn’t been reinstated.