This seems like a freewheeling legal department trying to do its job, however poorly, with less-than-optimal oversight or communication with PR. That said I'm purely taking a stab in the dark without more details from the documents you were sent.

I seem to recall another story crossing HN over the last year with the general plot of "BigCorp is suing us for [ridiculously unrelated reason] when we have nothing to do with it!" before the bad PR hits and BigCorp issues a statement saying "Sorry. It's all cool, we didn't really mean to target you. In fact we even like you." If I can find it I will edit my post with the details.