Psystar to countersue Apple for anticompetitive practices
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 26, 2008 at 5:31pm
Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple’s copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices, reports CNET.
The article says that Psystar, owned by Rudy Pedraza, will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple’s tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is “an anticompetitive restrain of trade,” according to attorney Colby Springer of antitrust specialists Carr & Ferrell. Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple’s EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages.
In July Apple filed suit against Psystar, the company that for months had been selling the Open Computer, a Mac clone. Apple is suing the company for violating its intellectual property rights.
Psystar announced on April 14 that it was planning to ship a US$399 expandable tower that is a “Leopard compatible Mac built from standard PC-parts and taking advantage of the osx86project to accomplish the task.” And in June the company announced a line of OpenServe rack-mount servers compatible with server operating systems such as Mac OS X Leopard Server, Microsoft Server 2003/2008, CentOS and Ubuntu Server.
Earlier this month Springer hinted that the clone maker will bring up antitrust issues if the case goes to trial. “This case has been mischaracterized,” he said ta the time. “There are a lot more complicated issues than just copyright or trademark. There are more complex issues [than those] in respect to the end-user licensing agreement. And antitrust issues come into play, too.”
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
