Jobs pulling the Nano out of his pocket.

It was a moment that fawning digital music fans and gadget geeks alike cheered.

When Steve Jobs pulled the iPod Nano from the little coin pocket of his jeans in unveiling the tiny music player last September, it became the defining image of the new, impossibly small and sleek player.

But little did Jobs know that it was also an image that would fuel a series of lawsuits against his company.

Claiming normal actions like removal from a pants pocket causes scratches on the colorful Nano screen, a Los Angeles consumer group filed a lawsuit against Apple late last week. The suit demanded that the company provide free replacements for what it called scratch-prone Nanos.

It was yet another in a string of lawsuits filed over scratched Nano screens. According to Apple's latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a dozen lawsuits were filed between October 19 and January 9 over the matter.

The latest comes from Foundation of Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and its plaintiff, Clark Sioson of San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Contrary to Apple's representations, the iPod Nano is defective," lead attorney Bruce Simon wrote in the complaint, which aims to be made a class-action lawsuit.

It claims that the efforts Apple made last fall to address the scratch problem (Apple offered to replace those Nanos that sustained cracked screens) weren't enough. Apple now ships protective sleeves for all new Nanos and has denied there is any design flaw in the device.

But while it has replaced Nanos with a cracked screen, it has charged customers who want a scratched Nano to be replaced a $25 fee, according to the lawsuit.

That fee breaks Apple's warranty on the Nano, the suit claimed, and the company must replace all damaged Nanos and alter its warranty to state that scratching and cracking will be covered by Apple.

Apple has sold more than 42 million iPods, by far the most popular MP3 music player on the market, with companies like Creative and SanDisk battling it out for second.

In addition to the scratched Nano lawsuits, the company has also been sued for damaging the hearing of its users, although the plaintiff in that case does not claim to have sustained any hearing loss.