Report: Apple, Psystar reach partial settlement
After more than a year of a legal battle between Apple and Mac clone maker Psystar, it appears that a settlement is near.
Computerworld reports this morning that Psystar has filed a motion that suggests the two sides have reached a partial agreement that would, amazingly enough, not prevent Psystar from selling Mac clones but would instead shift the responsibility for installing Apple's OS to the customer. (Techmeme) Details of the settlement were not immediately available, though a motion from Psystar filed in court yesterday indicated that additional information would be available in court documents being filed today.
The settlement would require Psystar to pay Apple damages in an amount not yet released. Computerworld posted this excerpt from a Psystar motion:
Psystar and Apple today entered into a partial settlement that is embodied in a stipulation that will be filed with the Court tomorrow. Psystar has agreed on certain amounts to be awarded as statutory damages on Apple's copyright claims in exchange for Apple's agreement not to execute on these awards until all appeals in this matter have been concluded. Moreover, Apple has agreed to voluntarily dismiss all its trademark, trade-dress, and state-law claims. This partial settlement eliminates the need for a trial and reduces the issues before this Court to the scope of any permanent injunction on Apple's copyright claims.
In the court filing. Psystar argued that a $50 utility called Rebel EFI be excluded from any potential injunction. The utility allows users to install Apple's Snow Leopard OS on to generic computers similar to those sold by Psystar. And while that presumably just shifts the cloning from Psystar to its customers, the company stressed that its customers would not leave themselves open to legal action by Apple. The company wrote:
Psystar's end users do not engage in commercial use of Mac OS X and their use would qualify as use for 'internal purposes' even under the standards articulated by Apple in its summary-judgment briefing