Apple won an appeal yesterday in California’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals confirming Cupertino can stop other companies from selling Mac clones.
The unanimous three-judge ruling centered on a company called Psystar that had been selling laptops and desktop computers running OS X; the original computer was a $399 desktop called OpenMac. A later model call the Open(Q) sold for $699.
Psystar sold the computers with OS X preinstalled, but attempted to get around the copyright law by including an authorized copy of the software and then claiming that Apple was abusing copyright by refusing to let people use software they purchased validly.
The logic behind this defense can be summed up in a Psytar employee’s statement: "What if Honda said that, after you buy their car, you could only drive it on the roads they said you could?"
Not surprisingly, the court dismissed this argument and reaffirmed that users do not actually own the OS X software, but use it in accordance with a license from Apple. Software licensing is a key component of intellectual property protection and the court could rely on a great deal of legal precedent when reaching their decision.
Via paidContent
Adrian covers daily news as well as the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.
