Having diligently hewn Psytar's legal coffin over the past year and a half, Apple has now taken up its hammer and set about nailing the Mac clone maker into it. This week, the company called for a permanent injunction against Psystar's operations.
"Psystar...has built its business on infringing Apple's copyrights and trademarks, free-riding on Apple's research and development efforts, and trading on Apple's hard-earned reputation for high quality, innovative and easy-to-use computers," Apple said in its motion.
"Psystar's appropriation of Apple's intellectual property and goodwill has been systematic and brazen, from the name of Psystar's 'OpenMac' computers to its deliberate pirating of Apple's Mac OS X," the company added.
"Psystar even seeks to profit from Apple's efforts to protect its rights, extolling this litigation as Psystar's 'opportunity to gain market share,' in a pitch to venture capitalists....Unless Psystar is permanently enjoined, it will not stop its unlawful conduct-conduct that is causing irreparable harm to Apple's business, brand and goodwill."
Catch that? Psystar was pitching VCs on its plan to use Apple's IP to "compete directly against Apple." Shameless. Little wonder Cupertino is so intent on burying the would-be rival.
And make no mistake, Apple legal is going to grind Psystar into fine silicon dust. In addition to the injunction, Apple is requesting compensation for legal costs and statutory damages owed under the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And according to Apple's expert witness (PDF), statutory damages for the former should run "between $1500 and $300,000″ and for the latter "between $449,500 and $4,495,000."
Suffice it to say, that's quite a bit more than the current value of Psystar's assets which, according to its bankruptcy filing, are no more than $50,000.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
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The World Wide Web Consortium is opening the possibility of pushing back against an Apple patent on software updates that Apple had refused to license royalty-free for use in a proposed Web standard.
The W3C announced June 12 that it's seeking prior art relating to Apple's patent No. 5,764,992--in other words, examples of the patent's technology in use that predate the patent itself. The patent, which Apple applied for in 1995 and was granted in 1998, involves this scenario: "a software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version in a completely automated fashion, without interruption of its primary function, and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer."
The consortium, which oversees standards including the HTML for Web page publishing and the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format, is working on a draft standard called Widgets 1.0: Updates that governs how Web-based applications can update themselves. Apple in March said it wasn't willing to include the patent's 30 claims in the royalty-free licensing requirements of W3C standards.
To deal with the patent matter while continuing with development of the standard, the consortium set up a patent advisory group (PAG).
"The PAG seeks information about software update systems available before June 1995 that offer a viable solution that may apply to the use of updates in Widgets," the W3C said about the prior-art search. "Such information could suggest ways to define a specification that can achieve the working group's goals without implementers infringing on the disclosed patent."
Finding prior art could help overturn the patent, but W3C spokesman Ian Jacobs said the consortium hasn't yet concluded what measures to take.
"There are lots of options once we have more information," Jacobs said. "One possible outcome, should we find prior art, is the patent might be re-evaluated. If it turns out there is prior art, that will be fodder for the next discussion."
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Work on the draft specification can continue while the advisory group deals with the patent, Jacobs said, but the patent does complicate matters. "Does it cast a shadow over the specification? The answer is yes, until we have a better sense over the scope of the patent."
Via Dion Almaer
Corrected at 5:15 p.m.: This story initially misstated which standards the W3C oversees. It oversees HTML, Portable Network Graphics, and others.
A young software developer has decided to pull his iPhone game from Apple's App Store because it was too similar to the classic arcade game Tetris.
Noah Witherspoon, a college student in Atlanta, created a free game called Tris for Apple's handset platform. But Apple recently contacted Witherspoon to let him know that the Tetris Company, which licenses the eponymous video game, had notified it about copyright and trademark infringement claims against the app.
Witherspoon wrote on his blog that he has chosen not to take the matter to court and will pull the game on Wednesday. "I'm a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now," he said.
He added, though, that he believes the Tetris Company has "little to no legitimate legal claim, and (is), presumably, relying on my being a small developer with insufficient resources to defend myself."
Apple has removed several applications from the App Store on its own for various reasons, including one called "I Am Rich," an application that did nothing but cost $1,000.
Copyright and trademark claims are a more complicated matter in the game world than elsewhere on the Web, something that came to light in the controversy over Scrabulous, an unauthorized clone of the classic board game Scrabble that rose to fame on Facebook's developer platform and was pulled after legal complaints.
The creators of Scrabulous, which was generating ad revenue, relaunched it with a redesigned game board and new points system under the name Wordscraper.
Likewise, Tris creator Witherspoon says he's not through yet. "I don't think this will be permanent; when I have the time and can find a good copyright lawyer, I'll be figuring out exactly what my position is and how I can make Tris available again," he wrote on his blog.
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