Apple May Fight Psystar with Tech
Most people have been expecting Apple to wield the sharp stick of a lawsuit against Mac clone maker Psystar, but it may not be so easy.
And while Psystar may be violating Apple's end user license agreement, or EULA, by doing this, legally there's not much Apple can do about it, says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patents for Apple.
"Basically, when people go to a store or download software, they have a license with Apple to use this patented software on their computer. But breach of contract is one of the weakest forms of legal disputes," Abhyanker says, referring to EULA violations.
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While Apple could likely tie Psystar up in litigation by filing patent or copyright lawsuits, the better choice may be technical -- issuing OS X firmware updates.
"Apple issues regular updates to Leopard," Abhyanker says. "Future revisions might require massive changes to the way [Psystar] sells software in this virtual environment and usually these things don't last long unless there's some sort of agreement."
Sort of akin to how quickly they put out firmware updates to the iPhone to block jailbreaks. Since 10.5.3 is still being worked on, might we see something added to that?
And while Psystar may be violating Apple's end user license agreement, or EULA, by doing this, legally there's not much Apple can do about it, says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patents for Apple.
"Basically, when people go to a store or download software, they have a license with Apple to use this patented software on their computer. But breach of contract is one of the weakest forms of legal disputes," Abhyanker says, referring to EULA violations.
...
While Apple could likely tie Psystar up in litigation by filing patent or copyright lawsuits, the better choice may be technical -- issuing OS X firmware updates.
"Apple issues regular updates to Leopard," Abhyanker says. "Future revisions might require massive changes to the way [Psystar] sells software in this virtual environment and usually these things don't last long unless there's some sort of agreement."
Sort of akin to how quickly they put out firmware updates to the iPhone to block jailbreaks. Since 10.5.3 is still being worked on, might we see something added to that?
