Granted, I’m quite surprised that Psystar was able to come up with this: a real law firm to fight the case versus Apple. The Miami-based company has hired Carr & Ferrell LLP. A filing on monday asked for an extension of the deadline until August 18th to reply to the lawsuit.
In an action that took a rather long time, Apple sued the clone maker Psystar for license violations and copyright infringement on July 3rd. Psystar started to offer their “Hackintosh” computer in late April 2008. They even started offering Xserve clones. On the heels of filing the suit against Psystar, Apple also wants the company to recall all clones sold since April.
An interesting detail about Carr & Ferrell LLP: Two of their lawyers now working for Psystar already worked on other cases which included Apple. Back in 2006 Burst.com and Apple had an official disagreement which was settled in 2007, resulting in Apple paying $10 million to Burst.com. They also squeezed $60 million out of Microsoft in a similar case.
Back to the case of Apple vs. Psystar. What if Psystar happens to win the case and is allowed to sell their PCs with a pre-installed copy of OS X? There were numerous reports about Dell being interested in selling their computers with OS X. Anyone willing to cross-reference any Dell officials with Psystar officials? Of course this is just a conspiracy theory, but where is the money coming from that is paying the lawyers? Maybe it’s the $4.6 million from Psystar’s property, which was listed for sale, maybe from somewhere else?
Nonetheless, it will be interesting to watch this whole case unfold. This case means a lot to the future of Apple as we know it. If Apple loses this, they’ll lose a lot of exclusivity. Other – and much bigger – companies will carry on where Psystar has started this game.