Mac clone maker sues Apple over Snow Leopard

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Clone Wars

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• Psystar stops selling Mac clones with Apple's OS
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• Psystar promised investors huge clone sales
• Apple asks judge to shutter Psystar's clone business
• Judge's ruling puts legal nail in Psystar's coffin

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"Psystar believes that it is legally entitled to resell copies of Mac OS X Snow Leopard on Psystar computers, but is confident, based on the ongoing litigation with Apple over Mac OS X Leopard, that Apple will view Psystar's decision to sell computers running Mac OS X Snow Leopard as illegal," read the lawsuit. "Counsel for Apple has also so stated."

The Florida-based clone maker asked the judge to rule that the company can purchase copies of Snow Leopard from Apple, Amazon.com and Best Buy -- as it claims to have done with Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard -- and that its practice of installing Snow Leopard on clones does not violate Apple's copyright or break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"Psystar's position with respect to Mac OS X Snow Leopard is analogous to that of a person developing a software application to run on top of Mac OS X Leopard," argued Psystar. "Just as Microsoft writes Word to run with Mac OS X and Google writes its web browser Chrome to run with Mac OS X, Psystar writes its software to run with Mac OS X Snow Leopard."

The new lawsuit also revealed that Psystar's Snow Leopard bootloader -- the small program that starts up Mac OS X 10.6 on its clones -- "makes use of features of Mac OS X Snow Leopard designed to allow software developers to extend Mac OS X Snow Leopard to work with different hardware."

Psystar continued: "Admittedly, Apple hopes that this hardware be peripherals such as video camera or USB memory sticks, but nothing in the technology of Mac OS X Snow Leopard prevents use of the same facilities to extend Mac OS X Snow Leopard for use on non-Apple personal computers."

Apple and Psystar have been waging legal warfare in federal court since July 2008, when Apple sued Psystar over copyright infringement and software licensing charges. That case is slated to go to jury trial on Jan. 11, 2010.

Two weeks ago, Psystar accused Apple's senior marketing executive, Philip Schiller, of being "unprepared" and "unwilling to testify" during a deposition earlier in the month. Psystar demanded that U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup force Apple, and Schiller, to schedule another deposition.

Apple countered that with an Aug. 20 letter brief to Alsup. "Psystar's request for the continued deposition of Philip Schiller is nothing more than an effort to harass one of Apple's senior executives and prematurely seek expert testimony," Apple's California lawyers said.

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