San Francisco (CA) – Psystar has confirmed that it will be taking depositions from a number of “high level” Apple employees, including senior VP Philip Schiller. The controversial clone manufacturer also requested that its supporters submit questions to be asked during the proceedings.
“We are pleased to announce that an agreement with Apple’s counsel was reached earlier this month and we now have the final list of their deponents for our proposed topics with respect to this litigation. For the past week and for the following ten days we will be doing depositions of some of Apple’s highest level people,” Psystar explained in an official blog post. “After numerous depositions of Psystar employees and associates the shoe is finally on the other foot, oh the joy! We’re taking the top ten most highly moderated questions for each person to be asked at their depositions.”
The deposition list reportedly includes the following individuals:
- Aug. 07: John Wright — OS X — Senior Software Manager
- Aug. 12: Kevin Van Vechten — OS X — Software Engineering Manager
- Aug. 13: Phil Schiller — Marketing — Senior VP Worldwide Product Marketing
- Aug. 14: Mike Culbert — Mac Hardware — Senior Director
- Aug. 18: Gary Thomas — TBD
- Aug. 19: Simon Patience — OS X — Head of Core OS
- Aug. 21: Mark Donnelly — Apple — VP Finance and Worldwide Business management
- Aug. 21: Greg Christie — TBD
- Aug. 21: Mansfield — Mac Hardware — Senior VP Mac Hardware Engineering
As TG Daily previously reported, Apple originally accused Psystar of violating the Mac OS X licensing agreement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act by installing the operating system on PCs. For its part, Psystar claimed that “Apple…improperly leveraged its Mac OS copyrights in order to gain exclusive rights with respect to Mac OS-compatible computer hardware systems not granted in the Mac OS copyrights.”
A California court sided with Psystar on the copyright misuse claims, as Apple did not provide any reason “to bar the claims.” Nevertheless, Psystar’s accusations of “unfair” competition were rejected.
According to official court documents, Psystar failed “to explain […] how this conduct constitutes harm to competition or a violation of the spirit of the antitrust laws. In the context of single-firm conduct, tying requires monopolization. Psystar has identified none – other than the limited monopolies inherent in the copyrights themselves.”
In July, Psystar reiterated its claim that Club Cupertino’s OS X copyright didn’t “give Apple the right” to dictate terms of service.
“Apple can’t tell an applications developer that it can’t make a piece of Mac-compatible software. They can’t forbid Mac users from writing blogs critical of Apple. And they can’t tell us not to write kernel extensions that turn the computers we buy into Mac-compatible hardware,” insisted Psystar.
