The developer of iBird seemingly admits to using Stewart's sounds. If you actually accept the idea of the copyrights on those sounds, then it seems like it should be a lawsuit solely between Stewart and the iBird developer. But including Apple because it offers iBird in the iPhone app store seems pretty ridiculous. On top of that, there's some oddity on the timing as well. Stewart admits that he's been collecting these sounds for 35 years, and that the iBird developer first approached him in 2007. But he only filed an application to copyright the sounds in December of 2009, which may cause some difficulty for him (though, it's not clear when the iBird product was actually released, which could make a difference here).
Either way, I can't see how Apple has any liability here at all, unless Stewart sent a DMCA takedown that was ignored, and there's no indication of that in his lawsuit. This feels like a typical 'Steve Dallas lawsuit' in that it lumps in a big company tangentially related to the lawsuit, just because it has lots of money, and the guy suing is hoping against all the odds (and common sense and the law) that it will somehow pay up or be forced to pay up.
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