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Filing details Apple's complaint against Psystar

By Philip Michaels , Macworld , 07/19/2008

Apple says Psystar knowingly violated its copyrights and license agreements and induced customers who bought the OS X-running Open Computer to do the same. Because of that and the resulting damage that Apple alleges is being done to its brand, it's asking the US. District Court for a permanent injunction that would bar Psystar from selling any more hardware with Apple software. And it wants Psystar to recall every Mac clone sold.

Those details are contained in the complaint Apple filed with the U.S. District Court's Northern District of California. Apple filed its suit against Psystar on July 3, though word of the legal action first came to light earlier this week.

Now the text of Apple's complaint is available online. (You can download it for a modest fee.) And the 35-page filing--a 16-page complaint plus 19 more pages of evidence--offers some insight into the basis of Apple's allegations and the arguments it plans on making in court.

Miami-based Psystar announced in April that it would sell PCs capable of running Mac OS X. Customers could order the desktop--originally called Open Mac but later renamed Open Computer--and install OS X themselves, though Psystar, which charges $155 to install the OS itself, encouraged customers to order hardware with OS X 10.5 preinstalled. In June, the company added a cloned version of Apple's Xserve to its offerings.

Apple says that's a violation of its end-user license agreement, a copy of which is included with Apple's July 3 filing. Specifically, Apple cites portions of the agreement in which users agree "not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple labeled computer or enable another to do so." Apple contends Psystar's owners are aware of the end-user license agreement--in an InformationWeek article from April, a Psystar employee is quoted as challenging the validity of the license agreement--and that installing OS X on its Open Computer constitutes a breach of contract. Further, Apple contends that Psystar encouraged other users to break the license agreement by telling them to install OS X on non-Mac hardware or doing it for them. And Apple further alleges that Psystar "makes copies of, and offers to customers for download from its website... 'updates' to the Leopard software that are either direct copies of Apple-generated updates and/or unauthorized modified versions" of those updates.

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