“It seems that Apple has grown tired of Apple-clone Psystar and has filed suit against the Florida company at the federal district court for the northern district of California,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reports for ZDNet.
“Apple, Inc., manufacturer of the well known line of computers and software, filed suit on July 3 in the federal district court for the northern district of California against Florida company Psystar, Inc. The suit alleges counts for violation of its shrink wrap license, trademark and copyright infringement,” Kingsley-Hughes reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jimbo von Winskinheimer” for the heads up.]
Gee, wonder who’s gonna win this one?
Lets face it, Shyster is stealing Apple’s IP.
They are not an authorised Apple hardware seller, all the have done is bought aload of boxed versions of OSX and made their own hatchet job shit macs from cheap Chinese components.
Apple is a hardware and sofware business, they are totally unique in that they make the whole widget. Which is the reason why the Mac OS and hardware work so well compared to any other pc maker.
The secret is the software, and you can bet your ass that Apple will protect that with its $9 billion cash reserves.
This legal case has no legs.
It’s written in black and white on Apple’s Ts and C’s – shtstar hasnt got a leg to stand on.
And if by some miracle shitpc wins, then this opens the door for any backstreet engineer to make hardward for any OS without consent… and that will open a whole lot of trouble for the pc and software business.
“If those few words don’t stand up in court… Apple becomes a fundamentally changed company – overnight.”
Which is why Apple will settle and/or acquire the company rather than risk letting it go through to a judgement which ultimately others would be able to rely on.
“The diff being that IBM didn’t control the software or (most) of the hardware, they only controlled the BIOS.”
As history says, Think before that. Think mainframe cloners, think any company which has ever tried to make this kind of thing stick. I’m not aware of a single one who has done so and won.
Psystar is not trying to steal any Apple IP, or cheat Apple out of payment for OS licenses by copying them and not paying, they’re re-selling a product Apple sells at retail.
Imagine for example if you try to restrict a car you sell to using only dealer supplied parts. Sorry, that’s not legal in the US. Imagine if GM said you could only run your car on Exxon special GM gasoline if you wanted the warranty to hold, and say it’s the same as regular gas in it’s formulation but twice the price. That’s not legal either. Say for example a company pissed Microsoft off and Microsoft wrote into the Windows license that Windows could not be run on that vendor’s hardware. Sorry, not legal either. Now replace Microsoft with Apple in the previous sentence and assess Apple’s chances in court.
Apple sells an OS as a standalone product. Then they are trying to tie another product (The Mac hardware) to it. That’s just not going to fly.
The bottom line on the boards seems to be that competition is always good-EXCEPT when it’s competition for Apple.
re: f I was Apple I’d devise a way to benefit Apple and at the same time give the law-breakers (like iPhone 1.0 jailbreakers) a way to go legit
—-
Apple already have a way for iPhone hackers to go ‘legit’…
…it’s called the iTunes app store!
Some very funny and entertaining posts here. I think Psyster took a calculated risk and Apple knows exactly what the score is and wasn’t anxious to play along. I wonder if the owner of Psyster has actually turned a profit by now, if so, and if it’s not too big a profit, he gets sued, files bankruptcy, and walks away with a small nest egg.
Brau, what fantasy story did you get that from. Apple holds copyright, that’s all they need to put them out of business. They are not just merely running OSX, they are selling it without permission from Apple. That’s called stealing. It’s called a license agreement. Also Psystar is not an Apple system therefore your claim is mute about OSX can legally run on any Apple system. Apple is not a Monopoly but they do have the rights to there property. Also Psystar modified Apple’s OS, another violation to get there system working on basically what amounts to a piece of junk clone PC. And not very well I might add. Long shot, more like an open and shut case. I’m sure Apple sent them many seise and desist orders. But Psystar got cocky and thought Apple wouldn’t go after them. HA!! Bye, bye Psy!
“1) does Apple have a 95% or greater share in the broader market. 2) is Apple price gouging, is Apple involved in price fixing 3) or other questionable negative market effecting behavior.”
Apple has 95% or more of the market for Mac OS X compatible hardware.
2) We all know Apple is price gouging. Otherwise Psytar and Apple machines would cost the same and nobody would consider a clone. Apple wants a return to the days where is has no competition for OS X compatible hardware so it can set prices where it likes.
3) By denying consumers an alternative, consumers are being harmed. It doesn’t really matter if you think the alternative being offered is crap. if some people who don’t value pretty cases are being forced to overpay for the same components in a pretty case, they’re being harmed.
Apple will not win this one.
“They are not just merely running OSX, they are selling it without permission from Apple.”
Not so, they are selling genuine licenses. If they were stealing OS X, it would be an open and shut case.
“mute”
Moot moot moot. If you had any legal knowledge you’d know the difference between mute and moot. So give up on the airmchair legal analysis, you’re not good at it.
Few others on the list… a matter of days…
If i CREATE something, this thing is MY monopoly! Of course it is!
Suppose the hardware would have been okay. .? Would that have made a difference??
Ignorance Abounds wrote: “”They are not just merely running OSX, they are selling it without permission from Apple.” Not so, they are selling genuine licenses. If they were stealing OS X, it would be an open and shut case.
Nothing prevents you from reselling a product, correct.
Pystar is not reselling OS X. They are buying it, altering it and selling it again as OSX.
At the risk of waaaay too many analogies in this thread, you can not purchase a copyrighted book at your local bookstore, change a couple of sentences and then resell the product. And you can’t sell it as some other title either, because 99.9% of it is not yours in the first place.
This is such a surety you can’t even call it an open and shut case. It was never open to begin with.
To SirROM:
(You’re quite welcome.)
I guess we can go ahead and pronounce it “Pissed her”.
“you can not purchase a copyrighted book at your local bookstore, change a couple of sentences and then resell the product”
Sure you can, you can buy a book and scribble notes all over it, rip half the pages out and re-sell it for whatever you can get. You can re-bind it in leather, you can sell it as a doorstop. You can chop it into ceiling insulation, or reprocess it into a fire log and sell that. You can buy a million books and treat them in that way if you want to.
What you cannot do is pull out a photocopier and start making your own copies and sell them.
@ Humm
1) Apple does not have a 95% market share of the broader Personal Computer market. The Federal Court will not buy the Per Se market argument that you and many other try and use. A Mac is a personal computer and the legal convenance out weighs the myth that the Mac is in it’s own Per Se Market.
2) Apple’s prices for like PC Hardware/Software bundle falls into the more then competitive price range for the broader Personal Computer market. Compare Apple’s prices with Dell, Lenovo, HP prices for like hardware/software bundles (make sure your price shopping comparison includes the cost of Windows Vista Ultimate for your OS needs).
3) all customers have a choice, they can buy a Personal Computer from Apple with Apple’s Bundled software or you can buy a Personal Computer from Dell, Lenovo, HP or the countless other Personal Computer makers with their bundled software offerings, So there is no case for harm.
Any attorney going in to argue for Psystar better have an argument much better prepared and come at it from a far different angle then the Anti-trust monopoly argument otherwise it’s going to be a boring and very short case with Psystar closing up shop in very short order.
@ Clyde
HP, Dell, Lenovo and the countless other PC markers are all Apple’s competition. And all Mac users will agree that competition is good. Psystar is not engaged in competition they are engaged in theft.
@ Why
Apple does not sell a standalone copy of Mac OS X. If you read the EULA what you will clear find is all retail copies of Mac OS X
are in fact upgrades to the full version of Mac OS X bundled with the Macintosh Personal Computer.
So Psystar is selling upgrades as fully licensed copies of Mac OS X which they are not. This makes the sell of Mac OS X by Psystar a theft from Apple and a license fraud on their customers.
Everyone assumes and everyone wants to apply myths to the laws. The facts are Apple has the right to sell Mac OS X only to owners of Apple Branded hardware without ever violating a law any where in the world. They have the right to stop only one from reselling their software product to run on unauthorized hardware.
@ Everyone that thinks Psystar stands a snowballs chance in hell of winning this.
Apple Legal Team knows the laws and they know what due process they need to follow to make sure that they’ve given the little guy many opportunities to escape before going to court. By presenting all the per court escapes the Apple’s Legal team demonstrates malicious intent, willful disregard and a pattern of continuing violation of Apple’s rights. So, when Apple asks the court to issue an injunction to stop Psystar from selling and pre-installing Mac OS X on their systems, the court is more likely to grant Apple’s request. Psystar’s argument will have little impact on the judges decision to grant the injunction.
clyde,
“The bottom line on the boards seems to be that competition is always good-EXCEPT when it’s competition for Apple.”
If Psystar wants to compete with Apple, then let them develop their own damn operating system. THAT would be competition.
What if someone takes the software that’s on a Nokia phone, builds a knock off of that phone and installs a modified version of the software (Windows Mobile, Java, Symbian, or some other proprietary OS, etc) and charges money for it without permission from the either vendor? Is that legal?
The argument being forwarded in Psystar’s defense is that anyone has the right to take any software that wasn’t written by them and modify it to run on any other hardware device and then make a profit off of it. Or that the original software developer should be forced to license their software to anyone so that others can make a profit from it by bundling it with different hardware options. So then is Microsoft or Sun forced to allow their software to run on any mobile device and then support that (because without support you can’t really say that the software would run properly after, say, an update)?
Perhaps anyone is allowed to install any software on any device that will run it (on its own accord), but certainly that doesn’t include the ability of a third party to modify the software so it will run on certain devices and then sell it at a profit without some kind of consent from the owner of the intellectual property. Even if Apple were to lift any kind of system checks that the software does before initial install or subsequent updates, you can’t say that the device drivers, as just one example, wouldn’t need tweaking or outright insertion into the software to make it function properly on other hardware. And where does one draw the line when altering software that isn’t theirs in the first place and is not open source?
I agree that OS X or Apple Mac’s need competition. That’s what Dell provides. And HP.
My nuts are itchy!
In the dictionary, under “Retard”, the entry says “See Psystar”
“make sure your price shopping comparison includes the cost of Windows Vista Ultimate for your OS needs”
Sure, since that’s the only way a Mac could win any price comparison. But even the cost of a Vista ultimate license may not be enough these days. Better throw in Photoshop and Microsoft Office Pro just to be sure the Mac wins.
“Apple does not sell a standalone copy of Mac OS X. “
The EULA allows you to install and use the software. You are also allowed to modify any open source components of the software that you like(i.e. most of the kernel).
As the term “Apple Labelled” is undefined, it presumably takes on it’s plain meaning, a machine with a label with a picture of an apple on it.
The EULA specifically contemplates that you may modify the open source components and disclaims system damage due to that.
the EULA specifically contemplates that an upgrade may be used as a complete replacement for software and has no language requiring that you be updating a previous version. In fact the online store doesn’t even call it an upgrade.
So Apple’s going to have a uphill battle on the modification issue unless they can show Psystar needed to modify non open source components to make this work.
There are downsides of using an open source OS kernel as the core of your OS and running it on a commodity PC platform and trying to still claim that it’s proprietary.
The important issue however remains that “apple labelled” issue and whether an OS vendor can restrict use of a shrink wrapped standalone OS to a particular subset of hardware it is capable of running on.
As no-one has ever successfully defended the position Apple is taking and many have lost in exactly the same circumstances, we’ll probably be looking at a more open Apple in the near future.
For Apple this seems like a Hail Mary, they figure that going down fighting, even without much chance is better than just giving in and opening up the OS to all players.
This has been mentioned in passing in several messages here, but I think it needs to be stated more bluntly.
If Psystar was just selling a Mac-compatible box on which you could install a boxed copy of Mac OS X that you purchased yourself, they might, might, have a case.
But Mac OS X doesn’t work like that. OS X will only work on a Mac. So Psystar hacks the OS up so it will run on their systems and installs it for you.
If Psystar was just selling a Mac-clone, maybe they could get away with it. But no court is going to give them a pass for hacking OS X without Apple’s permission and then selling it for a profit.
As someone said, if Psystar actually won this thing, Katie bar the door. It would shake the notion of intellectual property down to its foundations. Which is why it won’t happen.
——RM
“Or that the original software developer should be forced to license their software to anyone so that others can make a profit from it by bundling it with different hardware options. “
No, their best argument is they only touch the open source stuff, which they are legally allowed to modify.
“doesn’t include the ability of a third party to modify the software so it will run on certain devices and then sell it at a profit without some kind of consent from the owner of the intellectual property.”
Don’t you get it? Much of the Mac OS X kernel is open source. Apple doesn’t own it, and sure can’t stop anyone modifying it.
@”@Demon”
So Apple’s going to have a uphill battle on the modification issue unless they can show Psystar needed to modify non open source components to make this work.
If they’re selling the FrankenOS that’s the version commonly available, my understanding is that the Finder is one of the things that had to be changed. So, yes, they would have modified non-open source components.
I doubt you can get Mac OS X to run on non-authorized hardware just by diddling with Darwin.
——RM
“But no court is going to give them a pass for hacking OS X without Apple’s permission and then selling it for a profit.”
Read the EULA. Apple gives you permission to hack the OS. At least the open source bits. If Psystar is smart, that’s all they touched.