It's not so much the lawyers but the law. The law says that for trademarks, you have to make an effort to defend it or else you lose it. The degree to which making an effort is necessary is not entirely clear, so they have to make a paper trail to that end, even if it means being aggressive and then apologizing afterwards.

No no no. There is no point of the law that is so unclear as to make anyone think a reference to a traemanrk in a 3rd party quote in a piece of journalism is infringement.

This was either stupidity or laziness. Probably both.

I think dnautics was responding to the general claim "I'm left with the impression that in many instances lawyers only get in the way." and may not have been commenting on this specific instance.

Stupidity or laziness, or misapplied machine learning.

There's selection bias at play here - how often have you heard someone gossipping about a reasonable legal demand politely offered, which they complied with? Makes for a dull read.