Saturday, July 19, 2008

Apple sues Psystar, MAC cloning company

When Florida-based Psystar, a small startup, announced that it was going to make Mac clones for dirt cheap, many rolled their eyes — they’d heard that line before. During Gil Amelio’s tenure at Apple, clones were briefly allowed, but when Steve Jobs returned to the company he carried out a campaign to purge the market of every last clone. So when Psystar announced a $399 Mac with strong specs comparable to a $949 Mac Mini desktop, many figured the end was near for the company. These thoughts were put on hold about whether Psystar would deliver, as some found a handful of evidence to indicate the company might be a farce. However, Psystar proved itself to be real, shipping units to reviewers. It also unveiled a small server lineup to compete with Apple’s niche offerings in the server market.

Not anymore. With Steve Jobs manning the helm, Apple filed suit against Psystar looking to destroy it as it has destroyed many which came before. The suit was filed July 3 in federal district court of northern California. Apple accuses Psystar of violations on shrink wrap license, trademarks, and copyright infringement. Much of this revolves around the fact that Psystar will preinstall OS X for you; a move which legal analysts said would put it in peril. Details of the complaint are finally emerging. In it, Apple tries to paint itself as simply fed up about missing components on the computers, allegations that Psystar was trying to promote itself as an Apple product, and claims that it was concerned about Psystar’s quality control.

Source: Dailytech

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