Remember the basic lightsaber iPhone App that captured the hearts of Star Wars fans? It was free, but it was also a blatant case of copyright infringement and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was eventually forced to pull it from its store’s shelves. No worries Luke fans, it’s back. THQ Wireless, which has a long-term global exclusive on all of Lucas Film’s mobile game properties, is launching it later this month. Lightsaber Unleashed is expected to launch Sept. 16 to coincide with a new console game from the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Star Wars fans that own an iPhone might be happy to know that THQ (NSDQ: THQI) plans to release the more feature-rich version of the game for free as well. Features will include: multiple lightsaber colors that correspond to the main characters, and other music and dialogue.

While this resolves any licensing issues surrounding the lightsaber application, it highlights many oversights on Apple’s part as the sole steward of its App Store. Does Apple really do its part to vet applications for device stability issues and potential legal ramifications? After all, this is a company with a catalog of more than 8 million songs on iTunes and it’s successfully kept illegal songs out. Given that the App Store is on such a smaller scale, it doesn’t seem like Apple is doing its best to vet out the illegal ones. Or, what Apple is likely figuring out is that it is much more difficult to sort through all the submissions than it originally led on. Bugs are easy to spot. But checking the authenticity of an application is a more time-intensive process that would be difficult to automate. A Star Wars-related application seems like an obvious thing to check on, but that’s not the case for most applications. This lightsaber application is simply another example of Apple’s newbie status in the mobile content space, a business littered with companies that excel at one or maybe a couple tasks but leave other duties to better-equipped partners. Carriers make deals with aggregators for this very reason; rather than reinventing the wheel and absorbing the burden on their own, let someone else deal with all the testing and rights issues. Instead, Apple wants it all, and so it will have to do all the painful work that model requires. Could the App Store continue to be profitable if Apple added a legal department to the mix? Perhaps that’s why Apple prefers to wait for cease-and-desist letters instead of vetting the authenticity of content it sells and distributes to millions of iPhones.