Apple accuses brothers Robert,
left, and Rudy Pedraza of copyright and
trademark infringement and breach of contract.
Posted on 07/21/2008 9:26:01 PM PDT by Swordmaker
A Doral company founded by two South Florida brothers has been sued by technology giant Apple, which is attacking the Mac clones the brothers started selling in April.
Attorneys for Apple are accusing Psystar Corp., owned by Rudy and Robert Pedraza, of copyright and trademark infringement and breach of contract for building and selling ''cloned'' computers that run on Apple's Leopard operating system.
In addition to monetary damages, Apple wants a court to force the Pedraza brothers to stop selling their clones and to recall every computer that has already been shipped to Psystar's customers.
The 35-page lawsuit was filed earlier this month in federal court in California and was served on Rudy Pedraza at Psystar's Doral headquarters on July 8, court records show.
''We take it very seriously when we believe people have stolen our intellectual property,'' Apple spokeswoman Susan Lundgren said Monday.
The Pedrazas have until July 28 to respond to the litigation. Attempts to reach the brothers for comment Monday via telephone and e-mail were unsuccessful. A call to their Miami attorney was not immediately returned.
In an interview with The Miami Herald in May, Rudy Pedraza talked about eventually selling the Mac clones in retail stores and moving into a bigger headquarters. He compared what he and his brother were doing to ``the Boston Tea Party of computing.''
''We are challenging the establishment to make the market better for everyone else,'' Pedraza said.
Rudy and Robert Pedraza, 24 and 22, grew up tinkering with computers and helping out at their parents' networking and IT business. They said they believed their clones offered an ideal package: faster, more powerful and less expensive than brand-name alternatives.
But Apple's licensing agreement prohibits using its software on non-Apple computers. For years, Apple had allowed clones of its computers, but CEO Steve Jobs shut that down when he took control of the company in 1997. Since then, Apple has been vigilant against Mac imitations.
So when Psystar's clones began hitting the marketplace, intellectual property lawyers and technology bloggers predicted it would only be a matter of time before Apple bit back.
''Apple had to sue,'' attorney Randy Friedberg said Monday from Olshan Law in New York, where he handles intellectual property and technology matters. ``They're very protective of their IP and their brand.''
Friedberg called the lawsuit ''far-reaching'' because of its demand to recall all computers Psystar has sold, which Apple estimates is in the thousands.
'I think Apple's goal was to say: `Don't screw with us,' '' Friedberg said. ``And I do believe they'll end up putting these kids out of business.''
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> ‘I think Apple’s goal was to say: `Don’t screw with us,’ ‘’ Friedberg said. ``And I do believe they’ll end up putting these kids out of business.’’ <
Sounds like Bill Gates to me...
That sucks for Psystar...especially those who bought Psytar’s 3G “EyePhone”, “EyePodd” and “Mack”.
Those kids should apply their talent to selling Linux boxes. One has to figure that they have the skills to write software for Linux to make it more Mac-like.
Bring on the clones and competition. These guys look like they can build a better computer
In April this year, the enigmatic company Psystar began offering for as little as $399 an OpenMac computer that ran OS X Leopard and was a cheaper version of Apple’s Mac Pro. After the Mac clone became the favorite subject of all newspapers and rumors about a legal matter with Apple started to appear, Psystar defended its actions by claiming Apple had created a monopoly and the matter should be settled in court (wish granted!)
The problem is however that if Psystar won’t get crushed in court, and we do mean crushed, Apple will probably have to deal with a lot of rebounds in the future, when others might also be tempted to bet on the same card in order to make an “honest” buck.
And IBM and Platform Solutions (resurrected Amdahl).
Cheap parts, poor support, various functions DOA. Part of Apple's complaint was a bunch of horror stories from customers.
They didn’t use any real talent for programming. They just used existing hacks that allow OSX to run on generic hardware. Psystar couldn’t even create a way for users to apply system updates or reinstall the OS if anything happened to the hard drive.
The people who wrote the hacks were annoyed that these guys were selling their software even though it was licensed as free software.
If someone wants to build a hackintosh, they should buy a copy of Leopard, then install the hacks themselves. It’s surprisingly straightforward these days.
These two brothers are NOT selling an "Apple" computer for $399. They are selling a basic box that runs a crippled version of Apple's OSX without permission.
In addition, the Psystar Mac clone is not $399. That gets you their base machine, minus monitor and operating system. The cooling fans are not controlled so they run at full speed and full noise level to allow for cooling in case the processor is called on to really work. To call it a Mac clone you have to add OSX for $155, bringing the Psystar Mac Clone price to $554. Then you might want to add other little necessities such as WIFI and Bluetooth... and a Monitor.
Apple could sell a Mac for $554 but they choose not to compete in the junk computer market. Instead, they offer an very well engineered Mac for $599, the Mac Mini, which is totally silent. it also comes with the iLife suite of applications which Psystar does not include.
What makes you think that? They turned out a piece of crap that sounds like a wind-tunnel and runs a crippled version of OSX. How is that better than a Mac?
Well, to be perfectly honest, OSX already runs on generic hardware. It's just a very small subset of available generic hardware for quality control purposes.
Apple just has the OS query the hardware and look for Apple's permission slip. If it's not there, OSX won't run.
The "hacks" simply let the hardware lie to the OS. And it runs fine, provided that the hardware chipsets are the same as on the Apple machine.
Doesn't OS X go for $129 from Apple? That's a bit of markup. It's not much more money to go from their machine to a Mini that you know will work right out of the box, has a full warranty, has all the software, and has Apple's support department behind it. Isn't that extra worth $45?
Generic, technically yes, but EFI is pretty much non-existant on cheap PCs, actually on most PCs. The hack in large part involves getting OS X to run on an antiquated BIOS system.
Apple sells the Mac Mini for $599.
I like their style. I like these guys! I would definitely buy an Apple computer from them if I could think up a good reason to buy any kind of Apple machine
Windows XP does everything I need
You can get if for $109 from Amazon. Psystar marks the retail up to $155 when they sell their clones.
Let's say your neighbor Joe comes to you and offers to sell you all of the local Cable channels for half price... and he calls it Joe's Cable Company. The signal is exactly the same as what the local cable company offers. In fact, Joe is merely buying the signal for himself and then re-cabling it to his neighbors. Do you buy?
Another neighbor is offering John's Satellite TV services for half the price of DirecTV or DishNetwork. He will run a cable from his receiver to yours... after all he is just competing with Joe... and DirecTV and DishNetwork. That must be fair because they charge too much. Do you buy from him?
Another guy comes to your door and he is selling "The Dark Knight' on DVD... skinny case.. only $10! It isn't even out of the theaters yet. (I had this very thing offered to me today while I was eating lunch in a Mexican Restaurant!) Do you buy?
Strange. People state that they will not buy a stolen OS from people making crap computers and that make them self-righteous? I think that is just honest people making honest decisions.
You want to buy a $599 Mac, then Apple offers you one. It is quite powerful. It also comes fully supported and you can safely update it. You cannot with Psystar's product.
"Apple could sell a Mac for $554 but they choose not to........." That's all I was responding to.
It breaks down when we know that Apple got paid for every copy of OS X that Psystar shipped. I don't know how Apple does the internal accounting, but they may have gotten paid more for each copy of OS X with a Psystar than when they ship a Mac loaded with OS X. I'm considering that retail generally costs more than pre-loaded.
Of course I still can't see why anyone would buy one of these, but that's a different issue.
But, Purp, they do sell a Mac for $599.
Joe and John are paying the cable company and the satellite company for the service they receive. They are merely reselling it...
The guy who was selling the DVDs ... well, he owns a digital camcorder small enough to sneak into a theater and taped the film off the screen. He paid for his ticket... he's just selling the experience he bought and paid for...
BTW I derived my FR name from my old purple I-MAC and the last syllable of my first name.
The cable and satellite companies don’t get paid for each person who receives the service provided by Joe and John, the studios don’t get paid for the copies of pirate DVDs sold. Apple got paid for each copy of OS X that Psystar shipped. Apple just didn’t like getting paid that way.
Correct. Here's the requisite car analogy.
I recall several years ago seeing numerous Nissan sports cars in the "for sale" section of the want ads for amazingly low prices. These cars had about 20K miles on them and were going for several thousand dollars below blue book price.
So I started looking into it. It seemed that they were a good deal up front, until you find out that they all needed tires.
Seems Nissan sold some cars with a proprietary wheel rim size. You could only get tires from one company and they wanted nearly a thousand dollars a tire.
Nissan created an artificial scarcity by introducing a proprietary requirement with no good technical reason.
Likewise, Apple requires EFI to boot OSX, although there isn't any technical reason to do so. They could have used the standard IBM-type BIOS or something like OpenPROM, but they chose to introduce an artificial, non-technical requirement in order to restrict what PCs their OS would boot from.
This is quite apparent when you see the hacks that allow OSX to boot on generic PC hardware.
BIOS is antiquated, that's technical reason enough. It's 16-bit, is tied to old AT hardware and can use only 1 MB of memory. Think if Nissan moved to new light-weight rims. EFI allows Macs to do things not available on PC BIOS systems.
BIOS is the main legacy left in PCs. Sun has Open Firmware, IBM has RTAS, Apple and Itanium systems use EFI, and there are others out there. Now that Vista finally recognizes EFI (Windows for Itanium was the only one that did before), expect to see BIOS slowly going away.
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