Psystar charges Apple with 'kernel panic'

Psystar can no longer accuse Apple of breaking the Clayton and Sherman antitrust acts. But the Mac clone maker continues to take the offense in its defense against Apple's charges of IP violations.

After its previous claims against Apple were thrown out of court, Psystar this week morphed its accusations against Apple in several other directions, including a complaint that Apple is causing Mac OS to crash when the operating system detects it's running on non-Apple hardware.

A federal judge last week disagreed with Psystar that Apple is engaging in monopolistic practices, a complaint lodged after Apple sued the smaller manufacturer for alleged IP violations in connection with Psystar's own Mac OS-based PCs. Then Apple filed a motion charging that as yet unidentified "persons other than" Psystar are working with the clone maker.

In the main thrust of Psystar's latest round of counter-charges this week, Psystar claims that Apple is misusing its copyright so as to block competition.
Specifically, Apple's EULA prevents users from installing the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, according to the complaint.

In a related accusation, Psystar contends that Apple is enforcing this policy by causing "kernel panic" -- or system crash -- to occur when Mac OS recognizes it is running on non-Apple hardware.

"On information and belief, Psystar alleges that Apple intentionally embeds code in the Mac OS that causes the Mac OS to malfunction on any computer hardware system that is not an Apple-Labeled Computer Hardware System. Upon recognizing that a computer hardware system is not an Apple-Labeled Computer Hardware System, the Mac OS will not operate properly, if at all, and will go into what is colloquially known as 'kernel panic,'" Psystar elaborates.

"In kernel panic, the operating system believes that it has detected an internal and fatal error from which the operating system cannot safely recover. As a result, the operating system discontinues operation. As noted above, without a functioning operating system, functionality of the corresponding computer is reduced to near zero."

In another pillar of Psystar's latest legal claims, it says that in its recent introduction of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a legal tenet, Apple is using the act as a "paracopyright" by attempting to go beyond the protection actually afforded by that law.