Apple silences Psystar's rebel yell with injunction
No more, more, more litigation?
Apple has finally secured a permanent injunction against Hackintosh thorn-in-the-side Psystar, apparently bringing over a year and a half of litigation to an end.
The injunction, granted by the US District Court for the Northern District of California, prohibits Psystar Corp from selling copies of the Mac OS or selling products that can circumvent Apple's access control. Psystar had sought to build a business selling non-Apple computers running the Mac OS.
The granting of the injunction comes a fortnight after Psystar was forced to cave in to Apple with a $2.7m partial settlement of the Mac vendor's copyright infringement suit, split between damages and legal costs.
At that time, Psystar asked that the settlement should not cover its Rebel EFI software - which enables the installation of the Mac OS X on non-Apple machines.
However, yesterday's injunction amongst other things, orders that Psystar is enjoined from:
"Circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access to plaintiff’s copyrighted Mac OS X software, including, but not limited to, the technological measure used by Apple to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers"
Which puts paid to Rebel EFI.
And just to drive home the point:
"Defendant must immediately destroy any technology, product, device, component, or part thereof in its custody or control that has been used to circumvent any technological protection measure that effectively controls access to plaintiff’s copyrighted Mac OS X software, or effectively protects the rights held by plaintiff under the Copyright Act with respect to its copyrighted Mac OS X software."
Psystar has until December 31 to comply. The injunction leaves Psystar little wriggle room in offloading stock, including "non-litigated product whose legality under the injunction is legitimately in question". ®
COMMENTS
The source?
Now do we get to find out who funded them?
Easy to beat - new company
The people behind the errant company need only to set up a new company and Apple has to start all over again.
There are plenty of countries where you could sell the kit legally.
Tell me: why does anyone want an Apple THAT badly?
What's illegal...
...is not adding the EFI, it's the fact they're using "upgrade" copies of OSX on machines that do not have existing OEM licenses.
That they are doing is equally as illegal as letting people take an existing OEM copy of Windows and move it to new PC hardware. They are specifically marketing that this is what they do, wether or not they personally install it. It;s like selling the Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade for Ultimate on a new PC without an OS...
Also, It also places Apple support to be responsible for the software support for the apps that come with OS X, at least, up until a point that they determine it is not apple hardware. Heavier loads on their update services for unpurchased OS copies, strings of forum questions, irritated users who might not be fully aware apple did not supprot the product they bought, and lessend quality of operation (the Psystar machines are buggy and do not include full OS X functionality or performance, nor does it include iLife (which is yet another "upgrade" version).
its not a CD
You buy a CD on the understanding that you CAN play it on any CD player.
You buy OSX on the understanding that your CAN ONLY play it on a Mac. Don't see the problem if you don't want to use it on an Apple, buy a PC and run Windows or Linix.
Hmmmm....
And that brings to a close the sad chapter of, "Why install Mac OS on a PC that isn't Apple"? Psystar couldn't have really thought they'd win this one. They didn't have any legal legs to stand on. And they thought Apple would allow them to keep selling REBEL EFI? NOT.
"and now back to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress"....
