Apple Wins Permanent Injunction Against Psystar

By Jane McEntegart
published

Apple has been granted a permanent injunction against Mac clone-maker Psystar.

Judge William Alsup this week granted Apple's motion for a permanent injunction against Psystar, meaning the company can no longer sell Leopard, Snow Leopard or computers running the software. Specifically, Florida-based Psystar is banned from the following:

Copying, selling, offering to sell, distributing or creating derivative works of Mac OS X without authorization from Apple.Intentionally inducing, aiding, assisting, abetting or encouraging any other person or entity to infringe Apple's copyrighted Mac OS X software.Circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access Mac OS X, including, but not limited to, the technological measure used by Apple to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.Playing any part in a product intended to circumvent Apple's methods for controlling Mac OS X, such as the methods used to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.Doing anything to circumvent the rights held by Apple under the Copyright Act with respect to Mac OS X.

It's a tearful, tired farewell to the near-18 months of litigation we've been watching since this whole thing kicked off in April 2008. However, the ruling has left something up in the air. AppleInsider reports that Psystar avoided mentioning its Rebel EFI software which allows certain Intel-powered machines to run Snow Leopard. Apple had hoped to ban the sale of the Rebel EFI software, claiming Psystar had been "trafficking in circumvention devices" but Alsup's ruling doesn't mention Rebel by name.

Aslup claims that because Psystar didn't mention it in statements made to the court, he didn't feel it appropriate for him to decide whether the software falls within the scope of the injunction or not. That said, MacRumors quotes Aslup as saying:

"The inclusion of future works within the scope of an injunction ensures that litigation need not be needlessly replicated when the defendant's infringing acts are the same, but the copyrighted work has changed. Put differently, whether or not Apple allowed Snow Leopard to be litigated in discovery, an injunctive decree can reach beyond the four corners of the litigated copyrighted works to cover non-litigated items of similar character."

Apple Insider cites court documents that stipulate Psystar must comply with the ruling by December 31, 2009.

Read more here.

Jane McEntegart
67 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sliem
    Apple sucks. Apple is expensive. Apple is not worth it.
    Apple is a good healthy fruit.
    Reply
  • overclockingrocks
    Freaking FAIL! Apple's EULA was illegal with that non Apple hardware clause in the first place. One a piece of software is purchased the maker CAN'T tell the purchaser what they can or can not install it on. They paid for software and a license to use it. Deal is done at that point in terms of legalities of buying and installing is concerned. I hope Psystar appeals this on the grounds of an illegal EULA in OS X Leopard
    Reply
  • Socnom
    If Apple really believed its own marketing, they would have gladly sold their OS to be used on other 'PCs'. They should be sued for false advertising their product. You cannot compare an Open Market PC to a Closed Market PC. They should be forced to market their products as a bigger, more glorified iPod. By securing the rights to be a closed system, as of this ruling, they are essentially telling people their PCs are iPods with word processing and a smaller appstore.
    Reply
  • Abrahm
    Apple wins, consumers lose. What else is new?
    Reply
  • Apple's Operating Systems could very well be considered a Monopoly.

    The way this can be done is Apple is deliberately chaining it to hardware that Only they manufacture and market for their Operating systems. They are refusing to allow it to be run on any other platform.

    Where as if you look at other operating systems, you do not see this happening so much.

    MS Windows, Linux, and a host of other operating systems are designed to run on multiple platforms.

    Granted, very few of them run on multiple platforms natively, but most of them come in more than one flavour so that they can run on what ever platform they are needed on.

    So in a world where Monopolies are supposed to be illegal, how does Apple get away this or does the legal system think it's Ok because of all the computing platforms and Operating systems which are already present in the world?

    Yet Apple allows Windows and MS Office to run on their systems on top of OS-X?

    Go Figure! :o
    Reply
  • cyberkuberiah
    apple's OS is less open than Windows , any flavor . if that os was great , why not sell retail off the shelf copies for everyone to buy and use ? i liked the ipod , but iphone sucks , plain and simple . one can get rather better features for less money in other true Smartphones .
    Reply
  • Of course it is closed to only their systems. This way they can design the operating system without doing 100X the work. They don't have to make it compatible with thousands of devices, and they can make fun of Windows or Linux if there are any problems. On top of that, they can charge more for mainstream hardware than the other OS users pay for top of the line! Also, how about the Apple Homeland Security Moles....paranoid are we?
    Reply
  • balister
    What I don't understand is why no one is trying to hit Apple from the anti-trust tying side of things or atleast making convincing arguements to show that Apple is breaching anti-trust. Tying, by the anti-trust definition, is requiring a consumer that wants to use one product produced by a company to also purchase another product from the company, in essence tying the two products together. Under anti-trust, this is not allowed, yet the judges involved are either ignoring the portion of the law or the lawyers attacking Apple are not pointing it out strongly enough. Tying does not require you to have a monopoly to be used against you, it requires that you make it so people *must* buy an addtional product from you to use the product that they really want to use (in this case Apple is forcing people to buy their hardware in order to use their OS, which is tying and illegal).
    Reply
  • wildwell
    It's not a monopoly when there are alternative computing platforms. Apple's just a closed system, closed and locked.
    Reply
  • rooket
    sliemApple sucks. Apple is expensive. Apple is not worth it.Apple is a good healthy fruit.
    Agreed. however, why would someone build a company to make Apple clones? I'd be bored to death out of my mind every day with that kind of job.

    I installed osx86 on a couple machines before. It is, in a word, filth. If you want something Unix based, just get a port of Linux and not worry about some stupid proprietary o/s created under steve jobbs. just sounds yucky.
    Reply