Anyone think the Federal Judge in California is going to look kindly on Psystar opening a completely derivative case in Florida???
Mac V. Psystar and its Shysters Ping!
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Posted on 08/29/2009 3:28:01 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Clone Mac maker Psystar filed a new lawsuit this week to sell systems with Snow Leopard.
Psystar wants to sell Snow Leopard
Florida-based Psystar is hoping to bring Apple's latest operating system to its line of knock-off Macs. In a complaint filed in a Florida court Thursday, Psystar seeks an injunction and damages due to Apple's "anticompetitive attempts to tie Mac OS X Snow Leopard to its Macintosh line of computers."
The filing claims that Psystar is entitled to be able to buy copies of Snow Leopard on the market and install them onto its own computers that it re-sells. The suit alleges that the company is already capable of installing the new operating system on its hardware.
"The Psystar computers that run Mac OS X Snow Leopard are able to do so by running software, written by Psystar, that interfaces with the open-source portion of Mac OS X Snow Leopard," the filing reads. "The manner in which Psystar computers run Mac OS X Snow Leopard is entirely different from the manner in which Psystar computers run Mac OS X Leopard."
The company asks for a court to grant an injunction requiring Apple to cease tying Snow Leopard only to official Mac computers. It also asserts that the company is entitled to a court injunction preventing Apple from blocking Psystar from selling computers with Snow Leopard.
Recently, the Florida company deposed Apple executive Phil Schiller, only to suggest he was unprepared during attorney questioning. Psystar's deposition of numerous Apple executives was part of a lawsuit filed by the official Mac maker. That trial is set to begin in California in January of 2010.
Anyone think the Federal Judge in California is going to look kindly on Psystar opening a completely derivative case in Florida???
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
"Recently, the Florida company deposed Apple executive Phil Schiller, only to suggest he was unprepared during attorney questioning. Psystar's deposition of numerous Apple executives was part of a lawsuit filed by the official Mac maker."Going unsaid in this article is that it was PSYSTAR that was ordered by the California Judge to pay $5000 to Apple for abuse of discovery... and wasting Apple's legal team's time.
At this point, I think that Psystar knows it’s not going to win any of its legal battle with Apple, and simply wants to be as much of a pain in the ass as it can be to Apple out of spite.
Psystar is looking more and more as if they are a surrogate for someone, or some group, that is merely trying to cause trouble for Apple.
Of course, I would love to be able to build my own computer to run Mac. That’s not going to happen, though. Apple will remain primarily a hardware company into the murky future.
These people are like a swarm of skeeter that just keep coming no matter how many times they get smacked down. Somebody doesn’t seem to mind throwing lots of $$$ down a rat hole.
Let me get this straight.....
You can buy OS X Snow Leopard and they will ship you the CDs....that is OK with Apple.
You an buy a Psystar computer and that is OK with Apple.
But selling a Psystar computer with OS X Snow Leopard is not allowed by Apple?!
Interesting.
Pystar should change it's name to SCO.
Recently, the Florida company deposed Apple executive Phil Schiller, only to suggest he was unprepared during attorney questioning.
__________________________
LOL
Others have noted that it’s a bit too much of a coincidence that all of these psychotic lawsuits with mysterious funding seem to be coming out of the woodwork against Microsoft competitors.
Also, Apple is on record as not caring if you build your own Hackintosh and install a purchased copy of OS X on it. They won’t come after you.
Where Apple has a problem is when you build Hackintoshes and then try to sell them commercially.
The fact that you have the ability to type is amazing.
Again, the question begs - who is REALLY pulling the strings at Psystar?
Sure, it's easy to see MS behind this kind of stuff.
But Microsoft gets sued, too, and for example the latest stuff from Europe clearly has Opera et al pulling the legal strings.
It's just the way things are done.
PJ/Groklaw have been tracking the Psystar psycho-circus and it does have some similarity to the MS-funded SCO/Baystar anti-Linux stuff. I fully expect MS is behind Psystar in some indirect fashion.
My only question is, how does Microsoft manage to consistently choose such badly-run, psychotic, stalking-horses?
Oh, I suspect Microsoft is encouraging them from a discreet distance. This has the stink of SCO/Baystar.
Hopefully we will learn eventually.
I don’t think Opera is lurking in the shadows though are they?
By definition, Snow Leopard is an Operating System UPGRADE. The End User License Agreement does not permit its installation on anything except an Apple-branded computer.
Psystar is essentially selling COPIES of OSX Leopard and now wants to sell COPIES of OSX Snow Leopard. That those COPIES exist on the hard drive of a Psystar computer is irrelevant. That is merely the media on which it is being sold. It is also irrelevant that Psystar sells an unopened boxed OSX UPGRADE disk with their computers. The EULA for that boxed, unopened OSX UPGRADE disk clearly states, in multiple languages, that it is intended to be installed only on an Apple labeled computer. In addition, they have inadvertently admitted in recent court documents that they are doing multiple installations to their computers from a modified copy of OSX Leopard which exists on a hard drive at their plant, also violating both the EULA and the copyright.
Consider it this way. If the software was a movie produced with much effort and expense by Apple and marketed by Apple on a Blu-Ray disk that is included with an Apple brand Blu-Ray player. Apple chooses not sell or market this movie in other formats for reasons that are reasonable to them, perhaps because they do not wish to degrade the High Def viewing experience, or perhaps some aspect of that movie can only be properly appreciated in High-Def on their brand player. Psystar comes along and buys the Blu-Ray disk and copies it to a DVD and sells the DVD to people without Apple's permission with a Psystar DVD Player. Psy-star, included a Blu-Ray copy with each DVD player they sell, claiming that makes their copy legal and permissible because END users could, if they wanted to, make their own DVD copy of the Blu-Ray disk. That scenario is already settled law... it is not legal.
As to their current argument, Psystar will be slapped down pretty quickly as this is res judicata, an already decided issue, as it is exactly the same argument they first raised in counter-suing Apple in Federal court in California, only to have the judge throw out their entire case as unwarranted under the law. They are now venue shopping to see if another judge will ignore precedent and the rule of res judicata, to get a different decision. They seem to think that because the first case was about OSX.5, they can now make the exact same discredited case against OSX.6 as though that makes any difference to the concepts in law. Once something has been decided in a court of equal jurisdiction, you can only appeal that decision to a higher court, not re-open the same issue/argument in another court at the same level. Neither judge will appreciate what Psystar is doing. They may sanction Psystar and its counsel for barratry (vexatious litigation or incentment to it).
The judge did not find Psystar's unethical behavior to be a laughing out loud matter.
Phil Schiller was prepared to answer the questions that Psystar had subpoenaed him to answer... but the counsel for Psystar went beyond those questions to ask about issues that only an expert witness in forensic accounting could or was qualified to answer. Psystar had already subpoenaed just such an expert who WAS qualified and prepared to answer those types of questions. Psystar's attorney did not ask the questions they had told Schiller to be prepared to answer, instead going far afield on a fishing expedition, asking about product margins, future product lines and plans, and other proprietary information. Apple's counsel refused to allow Schiller to respond to those questions and Psystar's attorneys walked out.
In addition, Psystar had announced that they would be asking other irrelevant, under oath questions of Schiller about things that the general public wanted to know—submitted to Psystar on their website—and would publish them after the case was completed.
As a result of these unethical shennanigans, Psystar was sanctioned $5000 for "abuse of discovery" for wasting Schiller's and Apple's counsel's time.
Format shifting is settled law — in favor of format shifting. The problem with Blu-ray would be the horrible DMCA.
My benchmark for whether the terms of a EULA would be IMHO enforceable and not an abuse of copyright is to apply the high-level general concept to a book. If it sounds okay, then it’s not copyright abuse.
Telling you how and under what conditions you can read a book sounds like copyright abuse to me.
Not format shifting for resale. A company cannot shift the format from one to the other and then sell that product for a profit without the express written permission of the copyright holder. Individuals are allowed to shift content to other formats without permission for their own personal use so long as they do not modify the content or transfer the original format while keeping the copy, or vice verse.
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