Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices. Miami-based Psystar, owned by Rudy Pedraza, will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple's tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is "an anticompetitive restrain of trade", according to attorney Colby Springer of antitrust specialists Carr & Ferrell. Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple's EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages. Psystar's attorneys are calling Apple's allegations of Psystar's copyright infringement "misinformed and mischaracterized". Psystar argues that its OpenComputer product is shipped with a fully licensed, unmodified copy of Mac OS X, and that the company has simply "leveraged open source-licensed code including Apple's OS" to enable a PC to run the Mac operating system.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-12-15
Depends on how you look at it.
If you consider the fact that's made by Apple and apparently only can run on Apple hardware, then sure they're related.
If you consider that it is quite capable of running on non-Apple hardware, which it is, then it is unrelated.
The depedency of MacOS to run only on Mac hardware is an artificial limitation Apple has put in place to secure control and restrict competition of against their hardware.
I fully support this case against Apple.
RE[3]: Broader issue ...
Member since:2005-06-30
With some work and a bit of patience, every piece of software can be adapted to run on any hardware...
However, I believe that software and hardware can be tied together to become a tightly integrated solution, which is what Apple is claiming.
The end user should be able to do whatever he wants with his purchases, be it running MacOS on different hardware or a different OS on Mac hardware. However, Psystar is not an end user, but a reseller. I'm no law expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the laws are more strict for them.
Honestly, they could have avoided all that mess by simply shipping the computer without the OS preinstalled...
Member since:2006-01-01
If you bought a bluray disk and attempted to play it in a HDDVD drive that was hacked and vaguly capable of playing back bluray, more power to you. If I sold you a hacked HD-DVD played and told you, "yeah, this is a bluray played", who would you then blame when it failed to work properly? Me, obviously. But I'm a small fly by night operator that goes out of business and then dissappears from the radar. Who then? Apple? Probably. *This* is the crux of the issue.
Asking for it to be acceptable to hack generic hardware, should not be illegal. Selling hardware hacked for the purpose of running Mac OS X without Apple's approval? Whole different thing. As an individual, you know you are doing something technically challenging and that it might one day break. To pass such a product off to an end user - that is just an extremely cavalier and dangerous idea.
I hope Apple wins. I hope it also opens Apple to licensing the OS. But using the backdoor is NOT a good idead and not a business practice Apple sould stand by and let happen unchallenged.
Member since:2006-12-27
Although I see your point, you took it from the general meaning of Tying. the part you really want is the section on tying in the US.
Certain tying arrangements are illegal in the United States under both the Sherman Antitrust Act,[1], and Section 3 of the Clayton Act.[2] A tying arrangement is defined as "an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different (or tied) product, or at least agrees he will not purchase the product from any other supplier."[3] Tying may be the action of several companies as well as the work of just one firm. Success on a tying claim typically requires proof of four elements: (1) two separate products or services are involved; (2) the purchase of the tying product is conditioned on the additional purchase of the tied product; (3) the seller has sufficient market power in the market for the tying product; (4) a not insubstantial amount of interstate commerce in the tied product market is affected.[4]
In this case I would say that apple is in fact breaking the law, and the EULA should be found void.
Member since:
2007-02-17
"Product tying" typically seems to be illegal only for products that are unrelated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_tying
"Tying is the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). It is often illegal when the products are not naturally related"
Mac software is hardly unrelated to the computer it runs on.