Apple Wins Summary Judgement Against Psystar In Copyright Infringement Case

Photo: bloomsberries/flickr)

Be careful what you wish for. That may be the lesson Florida-based Psystar received after a judge issued a summary judgement in favor of Apple. “Psystar infringed Apple’s exclusive right to create derivative works of Mac OS X,” the court ruled.

Judge William Alsup denied Psystar’s motion for a summary judgement alleging Apple’s End User License Agreement was a form of copyright abuse. Alsup also ruled Psystar violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by installing a version of Apple’s OS that would run on the company’s computers.

“Specifically, [Psystar] made three modifications: (1) replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with a different bootloader to enable an unauthorized copy of the Mac OS X to run on Psystar’s computers; (2) disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files; and (3) adding non-Apple kernel extensions,” the judge wrote in a San Francisco ruling issued Friday.

Although the summary judgement deals a blow to Psystar on the copyright infringement issues, a number of other areas remain for a Dec. 14 court hearing and January 2010 trial date.

The legal battle between Apple and Psystar has had a number of twists and turns. In October, the Florida company started licensing its virtualization technology to hardware vendors, the Psystar OEM Licensing Program allowing Mac OS X 10.6 to run on Intel-based machines other than those built by Apple.

In September, a member of Psystar’s defense dropped out, months after the Florida company hired new legal help.

Earlier this month, the two brothers behind Psystar – Robert and Rudy Pedraza – were profiled by the Miami New Times.

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[Via AppleInsider, MacRumors and Groklaw]

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