Judge: Psystar can claim Apple 'copyright misuse'
A federal judge is letting Mac clone maker Psystar amend its legal defense against Apple.
Psystar was delivered a blow in November, when Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court in Northern California dismissed Psystar's antitrust claims against the Cupertino, Calif.-based Mac maker. The antitrust suit was a response to a copyright and trademark infringement suit Apple filed in July against Psystar, whose OpenComputers are designed to run the Mac OS X operating system.
In its amended complaint, Psystar accuses Apple of copyright misuse, as well as unfair competition violations based on its alleged copyright misuse.
Judge Alsup, in citing a previous case--Practice Management Information Corp v. American Medical Association--notes in his order:
Copyright misuse does not invalidate a copyright, but precludes its enforcement during the period of misuse." Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 520 n.9. Moreover, "a defendant in a copyright infringement suit need not prove an antitrust violation to prevail on a copyright misuse defense." Id. at 521.
While Judge Alsup found in Psystar's favor by allowing the company to continue its counterclaim with a misuse-of-copyright argument, he denied its motion to amend its claim that Apple's copyright-oriented conduct threatens or harms competition.
Psystar argues that the alleged misuse is, "at the least, unfair in that Apple has attempted (and continues to attempt) to extend the reach of its copyrights by tying them to computer hardware not otherwise protected by the Copyright Act." (Reply at 12). It fails to explain, however, how this conduct constitutes harm to competition or a violation of the spirit of the antitrust laws.
In the context of single-firm conduct, tying requires monopolization. Psystar has identified none--other than the limited monopolies inherent in the copyrights themselves.
According to a report in Computerworld, a trial for the case is set to begin on November 9.
Dawn Kawamoto covers enterprise security and financial news relating to technology for CNET News. E-mail Dawn. 
When this fight is over Pystar will be face down on the canvass with its teeth scattered out of the ring, and they won't even hear the end of the count.
that's bad for my business though, so GO APPLE(not)
Watch out for the anti-tank rocket coming from Apple.
Imagine wat Steve Job's response was like when he heard about this !
I wouldn't want to be in the same room
steve jobs wouldn't care about a minor procedural win so trivial... the bottom line is psystar is getting ripped up in this case, as it should be. a tiny win is no match for putting this dishonest company out of business for good.
it's only a postponement of the inevitable
they have no case whatsoever in their favor
come november they better be ready for bankruptcy
the only question that comes to mind is who in the world is funding them to fight such a high profile case ?
although I'd like to see OSX on more hardware
I'm Don't think Apple will ever allow it
Since they believe in user experience and hardware/software quality control
it's a shame but I'll take quality over choice n e day
Speaking of quality, it's "any," not "n e."
I didn't get whether you where trying to be sarcastic or not
but to clear things up
yes lack of choice is always the path to quality
for eg-: look at Apple's laptop lineup 3 choices versus 100's of different models from lennovo
which do you think which will lead to better quality control ?
BTW thx for correcting my grammar on a C.net comments section
And I mentioned your typo because I found it ironic that someone touting "quality" would show a lack of it in the same sentence.
must either work closely together or be the same
BTW I'm not for monopolies
but I hope some other company can follow Apple's policy of making quality products
by making quality software and hardware work together
Look at RIM and Nokia why do u think they have high customer satisfaction rates ?
I know it's not likely, but a lot of people didn't think Psystar would be around even this long once apple's lawyers jumped all over them. A small panel of judges is all it takes to change the laws.
Yet another waste of time lawsuit....just keep flushing that money!
Apple's making the hardware and the software is the reason that the Macintosh works so well.
it's not about superior hardware or software
it's about how the computer works
lets just say if MS designed their own hardware
we would have a lot less problems with 'Windows' in general
and a much better user experience
But Ms cares more about profit/billions than quality
so they follow the licensing model so that they remain a monopoly
it's not about the hardware being better or worse
but that they work better without very many problems
All companies that make great products always do everything themselves
eg-: BMW,Ferrari etc.
it would be awesome if I can use a Ferrari engine in a BMW
but thats not how you get a quality product
nah, most everyone agrees Apple hardware is far and away better than what is available in the PC world, plus you get OSX, which everyone agrees is more powerful than Windows or Linux, then couple that with much better resale value in years 3, 4, 5 and Macs are the best "value" for the money. Sounds like you don't yet own a Mac, thus your misunderstanding of why Macs are so popular with the high end computing set.
your resale value story is a lie
plzz do a quick ebay search or head over to Applepalace.com/other used mac resellers
even a few Ibooks sell for more than 500$ which are 2004/05 models let alone macbooks
"But Ms cares more about profit/billions than quality
so they follow the licensing model so that they remain a monopoly"
Really? I can bet you that the reason Apple went to intel chips was because they could make more money on their PC's. Intel chips are more proliferate, and thus less expensive overall than the powerpc chips. I haven't been following Apples pricing closely, so hopefully you suckers saw a price decrease overall when Apple went to intel.
My thinking is that Psystar is a front, remember a while back when Apple amended their case to include a number of John Does?
There's more to this than speculators know at this point, I suspect.
The actual text of the decision cited in the article is http://www.altlaw.org/v1/cases/1079356. Just scroll down to Section III to read the Copyright Misuse explanation. It describes what Apple's doing fairly well.
Apple has to squash this into the ground or risk losing their edge on this one. It's only a curiousity why they haven't simply bought out the company and killed it, which would be much less expensive than a court case- especially one that they could actually lose. Why they haven't done so to date makes be *very* curious as to the reasons behind that. What are they afraid of? They should be able to just buy out the company and make them disappear. Instead they are going through the legal rounds and that is just a landmine to keep dancing around. What is *really* going on behind the scenes?
With each new song, the dance gets that much more interesting to watch. So far Psystar has been the one in control here, as they are still in business and have some pretty heavy legal assistance behind them. Makes you wonder what the real situation is.
Psystar is probably run by a couple of fresh out of college marketing majors with techie friend. Shut the jerks down!
As much as it is popular to blame Microsoft, I don't think it works here since MSFT and other software companies have as much or more to lose by Pystar winning these battles due to their own constrictive EULA's. I don't think MSFT or any company really wants to bring the legal scrutiny upon those EULA's or other similar language.
I kind of suspect it might be a hardware OEM funding this, making Psystar a trial balloon that they can just push out in front of them to see if it works. If it fails, oh well. No liability. If it works, then would we see Dell, HP, Lenovo, or others coming to the forefront with their own clones? I don't know.
This is an odd situation where Microsoft and Apple would be best to join up to defend against such a scenario.
But there is certainly more going on than we see publically.
I think Apple tried to ignore them, hoping not to give them any credibility and hoping they would just go away, possibly afraid of appearing to be the "800 pound gorilla" in the fight. If so that seems to have backfired somewhat (obviously Psystar didn't go away), but honestly it doesn't sound right does it. Why not crush them with your mighty league of attorneys before they made headlines, instead of after?
But who knows for sure?
Really Dan? About 2 months ago I had the misfortune of having to setup a new Dell Server at work and the motherboard was bad right out of the box. Dell quality has gone down the tubes. I know you may find this shocking, but yes, I have to use and work with Windows every day.
"About 2 months ago I had the misfortune of having to setup a new Dell Server at work and the motherboard was bad right out of the box. Dell quality has gone down the tubes. I know you may find this shocking, but yes, I have to use and work with Windows every day. "
I'm Dell certified and have to say that you run into failures on any system out of the box, even Apple equipment. The difference being that I can have a replacement Dell system by the next morning or a Dell tech sent out on site with a 'hero kit' which is basically an entire replacement machine by noon the next day. The Apple product will take 1-3 weeks to get it back.
That's a very real difference in business class machines.
And yes, there is a huge difference between business class machines which I deal with and consumer level ones. I don't think there is *any* manufacturer of consumer level systems that I like or trust. Business class though, thsoe are the solid units.
Apple needs to shut them down. Psystar getting press is a problem as well, don't pay any attention to the little thieves, it's free advertising for them. I hope Snow Leopard breaks the ability to put Mac OS X on ANY other computer other than a Macintosh. Apple has historically been a hardware company first. Even better, a shift back to the POWER architecture would be a very smart move on Apple's part. IBM has some extremely fast silicon now. It's either that or start licensing the OS, and we all know how that played out in the late 90's.
Killing Psystar: bad idea, remember the last mass bricking, Apple has to give their OS to the rest of the world
What ARE you talking about? Even is Mac OS X 10.6 isn't available for PowerPC, do you honestly think that Apple has ceased to build a PowerPC version for in house testing? Remember, they had a 80x86 version going behind the scenes for years before it was made publicly available. And iPhone OS (scaled down Mac OS X) is running on ARM's architecture, right now. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a current build of Mac OS X for every major CPU out there.
And why exactly is killing Psystar a bad idea? Do you have stock in the company? What is a "last mass bricking"? I'm sorry I don't understand that slang. And NO, Apple doesn't have "to give their OS to the rest of the world." This is not a communist country, private property is still the rule here. It's their intellectual property. They developed it, it's theirs to do with what they like.
Sony records music and makes playback devices. What if Sony's media only played on Sony devices? Would that be fair or a monopoly? What if there were no interoperability? Pretty specific on reverse-engineering to meet the goal if interoperablilty.
But this isn't a patent issue, it's copyright. If Apple gave two shakes about it, they'd key their install cd's. Period. They care about their hardware sales and MAKE NO MISTAKE, it's become a generic x86 platform.
Apple isn't unique or preticularly inovative. They put a fancy wrapper on existing technology. They stood on the shoulders of others and waved a flag as hard as they could, as if to draw attention away from years of trash talking about Intel, the x86 architecture and Microsoft. Tell me, why did they release Bootcamp? So we could use the Mac OS or have 'better' hardware?
Apple should quit claiming to have invented the wheel, get on their bikes and ride the profit of licensing their OS.
by opening up their O.S they'll only end up with Windows type of problems
as far as Licensing goes
wat about Microsoft ?
Directx only works on Windows why is that so ?
MS is no better than Apple when it comes to licensing
they do so only where it's profitable
If they cared so much about open platforms they'd be using
better web standards than 'ActiveX' etc. in IE
the only open O.S is Linux
Windows isn't even close to being one
as far as closed platforms go
Since Ferrari make great engines isn't it unfair that that don't license it to others
But thats how the great companies work
BTW your Sony example is very misleading
Closed systems may be many things
but it's in no way unfair or monopolistic
we have courts to decide what's fair and unfair afterall
They already have windows types of problems. They just have less hardware variety to work with in trying to solve them. That's OEM. As the aftermarket for Mac grows with it's market share the problem will grow.
Actually this is EXACTLY what happens on games consoles. Sony sells the PS3 for a loss, they hope to make that up on the software, they do this by making sure I need a license (from them) to sell my game on the PS3. Now consider, Psystar win this. Why would I need a license from Sony? I could just make my game run on the PS3 and Sony don't make a bean. This is how console gaming works.
If Psystar did win this, it would be very bad for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo (although Nintendo do make money on the console). Tying software to hardware in this way is not specific to Apple and Mac OS X, not allowing that would be a much larger problem.
Personally I feel Apple should be allowed to do this, after all what is a Mac if it isn't the combination of Mac hardware and Mac OS? Why should Apple support Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware? Why should Psystar profit from Apple's R&D?
Just because they are not as successful as MicroSoft doesn't mean that Apple isn't a success, nor does it mean that they want to be as big as MicroSoft.
The IBM AS/400 runs AIX and it is available to whomever can aford it. If developers compiled games for it, you bet you'd see it on the home market. It has been used by several OEMs, Including Apple (remember the ANS 500?). Macs are not some overblown, impractical, mission specific mainframe.....for which, AIX is great, better yet Linux.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is no real difference in hardware between an newer dual core Dell and an Apple, except for the style and ther TPM (which works?). Apple opened up the 'support' can as soon as they put PCI slots in their machimes. How many OEMs publish Mac flash roms?
It's not like the line is blurred. New Macs are PC's and people still want to be able to choose their OS and save a little money doing it. If anything this show the loyate of Apple's fanbase.
They will honestly be doing Apple a favor if they win the suit. The only reason Apple is not as succesfull as Microsoft is because of the way they isolate themselves from their customers by forcing a hardware choice on them.
-------------------------------------------------------
Those two statements prove you have no idea what you're talking about. I'd try to help, but another half dozen years of education is simply beyond my abilities in this limited forum. Sorry, you'll just have to figure it out yourself. My hint to you is this: you couldn't be more wrong.
Now if they purchased a mac and then trashed the mac and installed the OS on other hardware, that would be an entirely different argument. Completely ridiculous in practice, but in theory you would have purchased a "full version" of the software that you could arguably do with as you like. Maybe.
And I'm not defending Psystar, I think the whole monopoly thing is non-sense. Clearly their are alternatives to mac, but people think since they like the mac OS, they should be able to force Apple to change its business model. If you want your own hardware, you have other operating systems to choose from.
The computer is the intell chip. That's intell branded. All the rest is just support. The apple brand is the sticker on the box. Apple would be hard pressed to define their brand beyond the sticker. It's an interesting argument.
Sort of like asking "If I make a computer out of spare parts that could be used to keep an apple branded computer running, but apple didn't brand it by making it themselves, is it really an apple legally entitled to run OS X?" Of course it is.
So why does it say "upgrade" on the box? Answer; because they don't make anything else.
Apple are in the same position NeXT were in before they made NeXTSTEP for Intel. All versions of NeXTSTEP were "upgrades" but (and I have a box here) on the box it didn't say this (somewhere deep in the EULA it clarifies this). When NeXTSTEP did ship for Intel it had two prices one for black (NeXT) hardware and one for white (non-NeXT) hardware. These were VERY different prices.
I imagine if forced to Apple will introduce Mac OS X for PCs (and yes essentially it'll be the same thing) and it will cost a fortune. They will justify this on the grounds that they cannot recover their R&D costs from spreading the cost between hardware and software.
Not one single copy requires that a previous version be installed to make it work.
It is possible to run the new version installation as an upgrade from the previous version. I never do, always start clean with an erase and install using only the latest disk.
None of my retail copies say "Upgrade" on the box.
Case dismissed.
- by shycelticwitch March 17, 2009 1:46 PM PDT
- Apples and oranges. Just for grins, I ordered a Pystar Open Pro for my advertising agency business. Not only did it not ship when it was supposed to, the extra memory and high end graphics card I paid for were not installed. That's just the beginning. When I plugged it in and turned it on, it sounded like a 747 landing on my desk. It was so loud it scared me. When it finally booted up (2 minutes & 45 seconds later), it crashed as soon as I tried to open Safari. Crashed again when I tried to open System Prefs. Total time on my desk, 65 minutes. Back in the box it went, and back to Psystar. That was 2 months ago. Yesterday I finally got my refund. But I am still out the shipping charges.
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(71 Comments)No thanks, I will keep drinking my Apple koolaid. It might be drugged but it's not poisoned. : P