Thanks to people familiar with PsyStar, we know now that the mediation procedure between PsyStar an Apple, a compulsory attempt at settling out of court, has failed to produce any outcome. It was mostly a going through the motions, according to WorldOfApple.
The settlement talks were mostly a non-story, as these talks are compulsory in some cases in California. Some had assumed that PsyStar would just get a bag of money from Apple to stop their actions, but it seems for sure now that the companies will go through with the actual court case.
Which is a good case, as I hope this will finally give a conclusive and high-profile outcome on the legality of the “Apple-branded-hardware-only” clause of the Mac OS X end-user license agreement.
The trial will be held November 2009.
I’m not particularly surprised the settlement talks went nowhere. Psystar seems out to prove a point. Here’s hoping they can do it before Apple rolls over them with lawyers and Psystar’s funding is exhausted.
as seen here http://osnews.com/thread?347926
“This is perhaps even more worrying for Apple and suggests that they aren’t going to be able to fund legal teams until the opposition caves in through lack of funds and resources:”
Apple has a very strict price model it uses to validate and verify its legal expenses.
1. Apple sets aside X amount of money to win battles it is fairly certain it can win in the public eye, so as to make an example out of the company it destroys.
2. If 1 Then, Apple has justified it’s spending by winning the case and scaring others away who may later try the same thing.
This is what Apple hopes to do here. Apple’s other strategy won’t work as they want to make a martyr out of Psystar. Apples typical strategy goes something like this:
1. Apple sends a cease and desist letter.
2. Apple’s lawyer places a cease and desist phone call
3. Apple pays X amount of money to sent a hit man…
4. Normally it never makes it to step 3 as in step 2 the layer makes sure the person/company knows what will happen in step 3
What happens if Psystar is being secretly funded by someone with extremely deep pockets? Dell springs to mind but dozens of other companies would probably like to see OSX on non Apple machines.
Looks like the article has been taken down. After seeing a 404 message for the link I had a look at the front page and there’s no mention of it there either. Apples lawyers playing games again perhaps?
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Edited 2009-02-24 07:47 UTC
There is a summary on Ars, here:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/02/mediation-between-apple-a…
In any case, the real threat is efi-x. There is no doubt about this one, you buy a dongle that enables an industry standard protocol, EFI booting. This must be legal in itself.
You go into Amazon and pick up a retail copy of OSX on DVD. It does not say it is an upgrade and it doesn’t require any previous installation.
So far there is nothing you’ve done wrong, you’ve not violated copyright or hacked anything.
You now boot and install. In doing so, you click through an agreement which among other things binds you not to install on any but Apple labelled equipment.
You write to Apple’s legal department, along with several hundred thousand others, inviting them to sue you.
Can they? Will they?
This the real problem. Well, also PearC in Germany and by extension the EU, but the problem in purest form is Apple’s insistence on selling retail copies of OSX while forbidding people to install it on machines that it supports and can be installed on. It seems most unlikely that this is going to fly long term. Something will give, regardless of what happens to Psystar.
Probably the share price!
The title makes no sense as written.
It should be:
“Settlement Talks: Apple, PsyStar Going Through the Motions” (note the colon)
or:
“In Settlement Talks, Apple, PsyStar Go Through the Motions” (note the comma)