Well if you can't stop them with a patent lawsuit, drown them in sarcasm.

Shortly after Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled iOS 5 at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) on Monday, a Microsoft exec tweeted that he was "flattered" that so many of its abilities resemble Windows Phone features.

"Feeling flattered today. Lots of great WP ideas headed to iOS. (Camera button/above lock, auto-upload of pics, better notifications," tweeted Joe Belfiore, vice-president of the Windows Phone Program Management.

Minutes later he added, "Feeling flattered today part 2 ... wi-fi sync, built-in twitter, background downlad (sic) service, short-messaging chats (though we do Facebook!)"

Since the iOS 5 announcement, pundits have pointed out that many features introduced in Apple's latest mobile build were taken from legacy products in BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems.

For more on Apple's latest mobile OS, see "iOS 5: What We Wanted and What We Got."

Belfiore is partly right, of course, not that Steve Jobs or Apple's jailbreak community (which gave jailbroken iPhones better notifications and instant messaging long ago) care. Windows Phone 7 does feature mobile photo auto-uploads, Wi-Fi syncing, a camera button and lock screen, but things like iMessage resemble Research in Motion's BlackBerry Messenger and iOS 5's new notifications system resemble Android's more than anything.

And perhaps Belfiore's bitterness goes back much further, say from 1989, when Apple claimed Windows stole the "look and feel" of Macintosh's visual displays. Just sayin'.