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Psystar dealt crushing blow in ongoing legal proceedings with Apple

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Hardware, OS

Yesterday, Judge William Alsup, United States District Judge for the Northern District of California, dealt Psystar a crushing blow in its ongoing litigation with Apple over whether or not Psystar could market and sell non-Apple computers running modified copies of Apple’s operating system. If you’re not familiar with the circus case, I refer you to, well…grab a coffee and click here. The two companies, embroiled in litigation since early last year, recently completed pre-trial discovery and each filed cross motions for summary judgment.

Judge Alsup put the ultimate hurt on Psystar when it granted Apple’s motion for summary judgment and denied Psystar’s motion for the same. In a sweeping order (courtesy Groklaw), the court agreed with Apple’s take on the case and dismissed all of Psystar’s defenses, both on the merits and for having waived and failed to properly plead.

The end result was a dramatic and startling court order in an ongoing series of dramatic legal squabbles between the two companies. And at least one of Psystar’s attorneys saw this coming. The litigation doesn’t end here; various issues still remain for trial such as breach of contract and trademark infringement, but Psystar has been gutted. The court is clearly unsympathetic to Psystar’s core position and while damages on the copyright issues falling in Apple’s favor in the order have not been ruled upon, it would probably behoove Psystar to start looking under the couch cushions for spare change.

A hearing is scheduled for December 14 on the remaining issues and for damages.

Read on for a more detailed analysis of the court’s order….

Continue reading Psystar dealt crushing blow in ongoing legal proceedings with Apple

TUAWPsystar dealt crushing blow in ongoing legal proceedings with Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SpeedTrack Sues Just About Every Major Online Retailer Over Patent Infringement

Can you spell “patent troll”?

Software developer SpeedTrack has filed suit against nearly two dozen major online retailers, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, Overstock.com, Nike, Costco and Dell, accusing the major online retailers of infringing some patent that supposedly covers a search mechanism customers can use to locate products on their websites.

The complaint, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the defendants of infringing U.S. Patent Number 5,544,360, titled “Method for accessing computer files and data, using linked categories assigned to each data file record on entry of the data file record”.

Dubbed GIA (Guided Information Access), originally developed and patented by SpeedTrack co-founder and CTO Jerzy Lewak, the system is designed to guide users to contextually relevant information when searching specific , ensuring a result rather than a page that says “no result can be found” or whatever. According to its website, law enforcement agencies like police departments use SpeedTrack’s GIA software to sort through massive criminal records data, which supposedly helps them solve crimes faster.

Evidently, this type of software is important for Internet retailers’ conversion rates, because such technology enables users to discover related or similar products on their websites when specific items cannot be found. But I can hardly imagine that SpeedTrack’s technology is so unique that the e-commerce giants should have to pay as much as a penny to the software company it.

Message to Lewak and the rest of the SpeedTrack team: how about you focus on sales to mark up your balance sheets rather than turning to courts in the hopes that Amazon and co will come fill your pockets for you.

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