Apple denied attempt to keep info secret in Psystar case
updated 10:50 pm EST, Tue January 3, 2012
Apple told discovered issue must stay public
Apple encountered its one and only setback in its court victory over Psystar Tuesday after Judge William Alsup ruled that it couldn't keep secret details about how Mac OS X worked. Apple couldn't order sealed documents about the boot-up checks to verify Mac OS X, its integrity checks, and its heat sensor management. Apple tried to argue that information it hadn't confirmed itself still had to be secret to avoid , but Alsup countered that trade secret laws couldn't be used simply to avoid confirmation of details already available in books and published code.
"Apple cannot have this court seal information merely to avoid confirmation that the publicly available sources got it right," he said in the ruling.
The Mac builder has been concerned that Psystar's tricks, which were used to pass off generic hardware as a Mac to boot into Mac OS X on its OpenMac clones, might be used to replicate the cloning tactic in the future.
Florida-based Psystar had been permanently banned from selling its Mac clones in 2009. It had tried to make the unusual defense that Apple had a monopoly over its own software. Judge Alsup disagreed and said that Apple's competition was Windows PCs, not itself. The court likewise upheld Apple's end-user license terms requiring its own hardware to use Mac OS X. [via Bloomberg]
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Joined: Aug 2008
Wow!
The judge gets to demand Apple to disclose sensitive information AND tells it who it's competitors are? Public disclosure of proprietary information was not even within the scope of the case. The issue was the violation of Apple's license agreement. Why punish the winner with something completely unrelated?