Apple Sinks Psystar With Permanent Injunction

After a 17-month long legal wrangling, Apple has scored a thumping win over the Mac clone maker Psystar, as the former has won a landmark permanent injunction against the latter.

US district judge William Alsup granted the new permanent injunction to Apple that staves off the Mac clone maker from selling machines that run Apple’s signature operating system, Mac OSX.

Claiming that Apple had presented sufficient incidences that Psystar’s cloned products breached the intellectual property rights of electronics giant, judge Alsup issued the injunction against Psystar.

Citing the same, the judge ruled that an "injunction is both equitable and reasonable to prevent or restrain further infringement of Apple's copyrights".

Incidentally, Apple and Psystar reached a partial settlement on December 1, which involved Psystar agreeing to pay $2.67 million to Apple in damages.

The injunction encompasses Rebel EFI, an application from Psystar that enables customers to run Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system on a non-Apple machine, the ruling states.

However, Psystar’s lawyers had tried hard to keep the product out of the injunction, claiming it was a subject of a distinct legal suit it registered against Apple in Miami.

In the ruling, judge Alsup wrote: “Defendant must bring its conduct into compliance with the injunction by midnight on December 31, 2009, at the latest. Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance”.