Psystar has reportedly filed for Chapter 11 after a protracted legal battle with Apple. The Mac Observer speculates that the company’s financial backers may have abandoned the struggling clone manufacturer.
According to court documents obtained by ZDNet, Psystar owes a significant amount of money to a number of individuals and entities, including:
- Carr & Farrell (credit card processing): $88,468
- Rodolfo Pedraza (officer loan): $20,000
- DHL: $12,793
- IRS: $11,798
- Fed Ex: $8,000
The bankruptcy filing is expected to temporarily slow Apple’s case against Psystar, as all legal actions are suspended when the court begins its proceedings. However, the judge will likely allow the case to resume after a few months.
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.”
The 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.”
It should be noted that Psystar is still offering a range of Mac clones, such as the:
- Open(3): $600
- Open(Q): $700
- Open Pro: $1,154
- Rackmount OpenPro: $1,154
