"He kicked me around, tried to drown me, burned me, and now he wants to swap me!"

Apple says it has had enough of giving people replacement iPhones and iPods when, in their view, it is the consumer who has abused the gadget and rendered it inoperable.

So today the firm has filed a patent on a kind of spy system that sits inside gadgets to record "consumer abuse events" and reveal them to Apple staff when you ask for a replacement.

"Often, particularly at a point of sale, personnel receiving the returned device may be unqualified or untrained to determine whether or not a device has failed due to manufacturing defects or due to consumer abuse," the company explains in US patent application 20090195394. (more)