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Judge dismisses Hackintosh maker's anti-Apple lawsuit

Setback for Psystar

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Apple has successfully had the lawsuit brought against it by Hackintosh system builder Psystar thrown out of court - at least until its opponent can come up with a better case.

So said California District Court Judge William Alsup yesterday in response to the Mac maker's request that Psystar's lawsuit - filed in response to legal action mounted by Apple - be dismissed.

Psystar's lawyers had argued in the countersuit that Apple was engaged in anti-competitive behaviour by restricting in its end-user licence agreement how Mac OS X may be used. Apple is, they argued, abusing a monopoly position.

Not so, said the judge, who agreed with Apple's statement that no market can be defined by a single brand - you can't reasonably claim Honda, say, has a monopoly on Civic cars. It may be the only company making Civics, but the boundaries of the market are defined by its manufacture not of Civics but of cars, and by that definition it's not a monopoly.

Likewise, Apple has neither a monopoly on personal computer hardware nor on personal computer operating systems.

Judge Alsup did give Psystar the opportunity to provide a counter-argument, which it must file by Monday, 8 December.

Apple sued Psystar in July, after the smaller company began selling PCs and bundled copies of Mac OS X plus the software tools needed to run the non-Mac hardware. Apple said its EULA expressly forbids such installations - colloquially known as Hackintoshes.

Back in April, not long after Psystar began offering its clones, it was lambasted by one of the developers of the code needed to get OS X to run on a generic PC for violating the terms of his licence, which forbids the commercial use of his software.

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Latest Comments

Windows won't run on my washing machine

I put a copy of Vista Home Premium in my washing machine on the 60 degree cotton colour-fast cycle and I was very disappointed with the result.

I have contacted several lawyers but they are unwilling to take my case, presumably because they know they can't beat Microsoft, which is a big rich monopoly.

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@ Angus Millar

Since the licence agreement, and hence the contract under which you are agreeing to use the software, is very specific about only using it on Apple branded computers AND you can't buy an Apple without the OS, THEN every OS X pack they sell is in effect an upgrade. Whilst it will do a full, bare metal, install, that doesn't remove the fact that legally, it is in effect an upgrade from whatever the computer came with (or had previously been upgraded to).

And there are other software packages which are sold as an upgrade but which are in fact a full install. For example, Adobe CS3 upgrade from CS2 is actually a full installer and will run without having CS2 installed - you just need to put in a valid CS2 licence key to make it work. OS X doesn't have licence keys etc (except for Server).

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@Brett #2

Where the f**k did you get the ludicrous idea that that Apple don't sell full OSX installers !

More to the point where do you get the neck to actually post such bollocks

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