End of the Road For Apple Mac Clone Maker Psystar, This Time Permanently

Who remembers Psystar? This was the plucky upstart company that tried making and selling “hackintosh” PCs under the “OpenMac” brand in 2008 – that’s regular PCs with Apple’s Mac operating system installed on them. However, to do this, they had to get around Apple’s DRM which locked Mac OS X to Mac hardware, by using a specially made “Rebel EFI” hack. Unsurprisingly, Apple was unhappy with this – really unhappy and after a surprisingly long delay, they sued Psystar, eventually winning a permanent injunction against them in December 2009 to prevent them selling their computers with Mac OS X on them. The grounds for the injunction were violation of copyrights and of the Mac OS X licence agreement.

During its defence, Psystar hit back at Apple saying that because they had bought the copies of Max OS X on the open market, including Amazon and the Apple store, they could do what they wanted with them. They claimed that Apple was not following fair use guidelines and misusing its copyrights. However, this ignores the fact that software is licenced not sold and Apple are free to impose these restrictions, which was their eventual undoing.

Now, the case has finally been closed, since Psystar had tried to refer it to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court refused to take the case on, thus letting the lower court’s (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) ruling stand. The Supreme Court’s appeal rejection can be viewed here (105KB PDF) and makes for depressing reading for Psystar, their lawyers and anyone rooting for them. Apple declined to comment on this ruling.