Apple Wins Like a Champ - Psystar is Toast — What? You're Surprised?
What? You're Surprised? — Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. Here's the order [PDF]. It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted.
Context & Ripple Effects
The end was visible from the start of this fight. Psystar opened in April 2008 by arguing that Apple's licensing terms violate U.S. monopoly laws, framing itself as an antitrust challenger rather than a copyright defendant — and when reinforcements joined the case in July 2009, it looked like the clone maker might have the resources to make that argument stick.
Today's order ends that theory. Judge grants Apple summary judgment on both copyright infringement and DMCA violation in the California case, and Psystar's first-sale defense — its core legal argument for reselling machines running Mac OS X — was rejected outright. Groklaw calls it 'a total massacre,' and Tech Beat's same-day pickup ('Apple Crushes Clone Maker') shows how widely read the verdict was.
First-order effects
- Psystar's business model is now legally untenable: with summary judgment granted on infringement and DMCA grounds, selling Mac clones running Apple's OS has no surviving defense in this case, and damages plus remedies remain to be assessed.
- Apple's EULA-as-enforcement strategy is validated — the court accepted that macOS licensing restricts installation to Apple-branded hardware, meaning every future unauthorized cloner faces the same wall.
Second-order effects
- Would-be hardware partners and gray-market builders lose the precedent they were watching for: the first-sale doctrine does not shield redistribution of Apple software bundled into third-party machines, chilling any remaining clone market before it re-forms.
- Apple gains a reusable enforcement tool — the DMCA claim lets it treat OS modifications as circumvention, raising the cost of any competitor or customer attempting to run macOS outside sanctioned hardware.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern holds, closed-platform vendors will increasingly enforce hardware and channel lock-in through copyright and anti-circumvention law rather than contract terms alone — making the DMCA a structural moat around ecosystems, and pushing disputes over platform openness toward courts whenever third parties test the boundary.
The trend: Platform owners are learning that copyright plus DMCA anti-circumvention claims, not antitrust arguments from challengers, are the decisive legal lever for enforcing closed-hardware ecosystems.