Apple wins key legal battle over Florida based clonemaker Psystar

In a ruling last week, Judge Alsup granted Apple's motion for Summary Judgment and dealt a fatal blow to Psystar's chances for legal success

The Florida based Psystar corporation has been a perennial thorn in Apple's side for well over a year.  You might recall that Psystar is the company that sells un-authroized Mac clones via its website, in addition to selling software (called Rebel EFI) which enables PC owners to install OS X on their machines.  Apple naturally doesn't take too kindly to companies stealing its intellectual property, and in the summer of 2008, Apple took Psystar to court for copyright infringement.

Over the past few months, the legal battles between Psystar and Apple have been extremely contentious, and even though Apple seemed to have a much stronger legal case, some intellectual property experts stated that Psystar could very well give Apple a legal run for its money.

But any notions Psystar had of sticking it to Apple took a catastrophic hit recently when Judge Alsup reviewed the Summary Judgement motions filed by both Psystar and Apple and came down on Apple's interpretation of the law.  In a 16 page order which upheld the EULA which accompanies all retail copies of OS X, Judge Alsup stated that Psystar's un-authorized modification and sale of OS X violated Apple's copyrights while at the same time destroying any legal theory Psystar was hoping to successfully use as a defense of its actions.

For example, one of Psystar's defenses was the First Sale Doctrine of the Copyright Act.  The first sale doctrine essentially allows a purchaser of a product to go ahead and re-sell it to a third party without having to share any profits with the original copyright holder.  It's this doctrine that enables someone who purchases a DVD from Amazon, for example, to sell it online on Ebay and keep all of the proceeds.  Psystar's defense, in part, asserted that it was simply re-selling legally purchased copies of OS X to interested consumers.  Judge Alsup, however, ruled that the first sale doctrine doesn't apply because Psystar had to modify OS X in order to get the OS to run on its own hardware, effectively violating the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and making all of their copies of OS X illegal from the get go, and thus, not subject to the first sale doctrine defense.

Going forward, Psystar needs to concern itself with the remedies it may soon find itself ordered to provide to Apple.  A hearing on that issue is scheduled for December 14th, and based on Judge Alsup's ruling, there'll probably be more bad news for Psystar in just a couple weeks.

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