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Psystar Working on Mac Laptop Clone, Apple Files DMCA Charges

Tuesday December 2, 2008 10:02 am PST by Arnold Kim
ZDNet reveals that Apple has amended its lawsuit against Psystar with charges of violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA is a controversial law that criminalizes the act of circumventing copy protection. Apple alleges that Psystar did just that in developing their Mac-compatible Open Computer:

Defendant has manufactured, imported, offered to the public, provided or otherwise trafficked a product, device, component, technology, software, or "code" ("the Circumvention Devices") that are primarily designed or produced for the purpose of either circumventing Apple's technological protection measures that effectively control access to Copyrighted Works, or allowing third parties to access Apple's Copyrighted Works without authorization.

The court documents also confirm that Psystar was actively working on a Mac OS X laptop clone this past October:

On information and belief, in fall 2008, Psystar worked to develop a laptop product that runs Mac OS X and in October, 2008, Psystar announced that it is planning to sell in commerce additional computers, servers, laptops, and/or hard drives that are preinstalled with or which will run a modified, unauthorized, version of Mac OS X operating system, including but not limited to a product referred to on Psystar's website as the "mobile Open Computer."

Whether Psystar will release such a product will obviously depend on their ability to successfully defend against this lawsuit from Apple. The lawsuit hasn't prevented Psystar from continuing to sell their desktop Mac clone and release new features such as Blu-ray and additional graphics card support.

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