Psystar Corp Hires Law Firm, Hopes to Beat Apple Inc in Court
July 31, 2008
Psystar Corp has retained a law firm, Carr & Ferrell LLP, that has beaten Apple Inc in the past. This case is bound to be extremely interesting, because no side is ready to negotiate or compromise over its principles. Carr & Ferrell LLP is a full-service law firm positioned to provide intellectual property, corporate, financing and litigation services.
The firms’ legal practice is broad-ranging, from all aspects of patent, trademark, and copyright law and litigation, to advice on domain names, security interests in intellectual property, licensing, franchising and other legal areas relating to technology.
Psystar has been making and selling computers using Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X, without any licence. These cloned Mac computers are sometimes referred as “hackintosh.”
About two weeks ago, Apple officially filed a lawsuit against the Doral-based Psystar who is alleged to manufacture cloned Macs. The 16-page suit alleges copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, and trademark infringement, among other legal claims. The systems were based upon an idea put together by an online group, the osx86 project. That group puts out detailed instructions on how to use standard PC computer parts to build a Macintosh system for half the price than what Apple charges for a similar new system.
“Three attorneys at Carr & Ferrell were listed on the Monday stipulation, including Colby Springer, Christine Watson and Robert Yorio, a partner at the firm. Both Yorio and Springer were among the lawyers who represented Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Burst.com Inc. in its patent-infringement case against Apple that started in 2006,” - reported ComputerWorld.
Apple settled that case out of court for $10 million dollars and agreed to licence Burst’s audio and video streaming patents. If Psystar happens to lose this case, it will go bankrupt. Both Apple and Psystar have declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Any normal human being would look at this, take two minutes, and agree Psystar are in the wrong over pretty much every point.
So why are -likely- millions going to be wasted for no purpose?
Lawyers, shame they ever had to exist at all really.
Actually, there’s quite a lot to debate in this case.
First, there’s the legality of Apple’s OS X EULA, which contains language to the effect that OS X can only be installed on Apple-labeled hardware. This is akin to Microsoft telling you that you can only run Windows on Microsoft-labeled hardware. It’s a blatant attempt by Apple to create a monopoly for hardware that runs Mac OS X. Then there’s the question of what constitutes “Apple labeled hardware” in the eyes of the law. If I attach an Apple logo or write the word Apple on a generic PC case, is that not an “Apple labeled” system?
Second, there’s that monopoly question. True, Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop or laptop computers. However, they DO have and ARE attempting to maintain a monopoly on desktop and laptop computers that run Mac OS X. Psystar was simply trying to compete in the space for “computers that run OS X”.
Third, an adjunct to the monopoly question is Apple’s assertion that shrink-wrap OS X licenses are only “upgrade” licenses to be used on hardware they sold. If that’s the case, where are the “full” licenses, and why aren’t there any? Much of OS X is open source, which means Apple can’t really tie it to their hardware, as it is available “to the world” for free. If I want to run the open source parts of OS X on something other than an Apple device, I don’t believe Apple has any right to stop me there.
The bottom line is that this is far from an open-and-shut case and a slam-dunk for Apple. Apple has a right to protect its copyrights and trademarks. It does not have a right to create a monopoly any more than Microsoft (or any other company) does… and make no mistake, that’s what it’s trying to do here.