Apple draws new and conflicting Psystar arguments
Apple clone-maker Psystar keeps scraping down deeper to the bottom of the barrel to turn up new claims in its Apple court battle, and its latest arguments seem at odds with its earlier attempts.
In a 17-page response to Apple filed last week in a San Francisco court, Psystar accuses Apple of violating the US Copyright Act by trying to prevent it from reselling the Macintosh OS after buying copies of the software from Apple.
According to Psystar, Apple is breaking a portion of the act known as the "doctrine of first sale," which means the following: "Once a copyright owner consents to the sale of particular copies of a work, the owner may not thereafter exercise distribution rights with respect to those copies."
Conversely, however, Psystar also continues to maintain that Apple doesn't own the copyright to Mac OS X, anyway.
Psystar told the court last week that Apple software code -- which it previously insisted Apple had inserted into OS X to verify the presence of Apple hardware -- "does not constitute a technological copyright measure." Along the way, the clone maker also charged that Apple failed to file the necessary copyright documents for OS X "with the copyright office as required" by law.
As previously reported in Betanews, the legal brouhaha between the two companies started earlier this year, when Apple hauled Psytar into court on charges of trade infringement and breach of contract around selling computers that run a version of Mac OS X.
Psystar then filed a countersuit claiming that Apple had broken the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts by allegedly engaging in monopolistic practices.
After the antitrust arguments got thrown out of court, Judge William Alsop gave Psystar permission to modify its legal position, ultimately paving the way for the introduction of Psystar's copyright accusations.
Meanwhile, in an amended complaint filed by Apple in December, Apple said it believes there are organizations and/or individuals other than Psystar involved in Psystar's legal misdeeds. But Apple admitted being unable to identify those people.