decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more... 		decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

You won't find me on Facebook

Donate

Donate Paypal

No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.

What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments

Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Psystar - Who Are These People?
Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 10:00 AM EDT

It turns out that Psystar, the company being sued by Apple, is owned by two brothers, ages 22 and 24, according to a story in the Miami Herald, now on Free Republic's site:
Attorneys for Apple are accusing Psystar Corp., owned by Rudy and Robert Pedraza, of copyright and trademark infringement and breach of contract for building and selling "cloned" computers that run on Apple's Leopard operating system....

Rudy and Robert Pedraza, 24 and 22, grew up tinkering with computers and helping out at their parents' networking and IT business.... "Apple had to sue," attorney Randy Friedberg said Monday from Olshan Law in New York, where he handles intellectual property and technology matters. "They're very protective of their IP and their brand." Friedberg called the lawsuit "far-reaching" because of its demand to recall all computers Psystar has sold, which Apple estimates is in the thousands. "I think Apple's goal was to say: 'Don't screw with us,'" Friedberg said. "And I do believe they'll end up putting these kids out of business."

Someone sent me a link to a comment on the Internet alleging a supposed connection between Psystar and a securities fraud case, but after hours of digging, I believe I can demonstrate that it isn't the same folks. Let me show you what I found.

First, I'll show you what led to the confusion. If you go to Wayback and look up www.psystar.com, here are the results. And here's the way the website psystar.com looked in 2001, when it was purportedly an investor site of some kind. Notice all the links on the left? If you mouse over them, you'll see they all are psystar.com urls. If you view the source for the Psystar page dated September of 2001, though, you'll see that back then, someone there was building a site called RAZORFX.com, but the url was psystar.com. The webmaster is listed as webmaster at razorfx.com, and there was a link to a graphic, razorfxrings.jpg which is a picture of a map to Psystar. If you click on the link for support on that same page, you end up here, on Psystar's current support page. So there is a link of some kind between Psystar.com and razorfx.com.

The criminal case, 1:08-cr-00401-DLI-JMA, USA v. Eisner et al, was against two partners in a company called Razor FX. But hang on a moment. After researching the criminal case and two civil suits against the Razor FX partners, I think the two sites can be distinguished, because the criminal Information [PDF] in the securities fraud case lists the website used for the Ponzi scheme as being razorfx.net, not com, and the ownership is not the same for the two sites.

BetterWhoIs lists [fill in the numbers] one of the partners in the securities fraud case as the owner of razorfx.net; razorfx.com, however, is listed by Network Solutions as belonging to Expressi Networks, in Miami, as of 2002, although not at any of the addresses that Charles Arthur reported in the Guardian when trying to figure out who or what Psystar was. Here are the ARIN details on razorfx.com. So it appears not to be the same people, although a very weird coincidence that two sites would use the same name. How a 22-year-old had a site regarding his portfolio in 2001, however, is a mystery. Perhaps he shares a name with his dad. It's not something I can explain with current facts. And while I can imagine all sorts of things, I like to stick to provable facts.

Here's what razorfx.net used to look like in 2007, from Wayback's list. Quite a difference from the 2001 investor site calling itself Psystar and linking to razorfx.com, don't you think?

Just so no one needs to duplicate all the research I did already, here are the complaints from the two civil cases. One is Pransky et al v. Eisner et al, and here's the Complaint [PDF], and the second is Horizon FX Limited Partnership v. Razor FX, Inc. et al, and here's the Complaint in that litigation and the Amended Complaint [PDFs], brought by the Canadian company, Horizon FX, against Razor FX and both partners.

Razorfx.com shares or shared servers with other sites, which you can see here and here. Another web site using their servers, with a Miami, FL address, lists a contact name of Esteban Alonso at Emenee Technical. The address isn't identical to what Charles Arthur published, although it appears to be in the vicinity. Gizmodo actually visited all the Psystar addresses in April (scroll all the way down the page to get the full story).

The registered agent for Psystar is listed for a number of companies in Florida, all shown on Gizmodo's site, and the one that is active is at floridatek.com -- FloridaTek -- a computer services company, which if you recall was what Arthur was told Psystar was before it began doing its Apple thing. So that checks out. Except that Gizmodo has a warning that some of the pages download an exe, and they show a screenshot of it trying to do so, so they warn not to visit.

Gizmodo links to Tom's Hardware, an interview it did with Rudy Pedraza:

When we asked about Apple’s EULA for Leopard and that no one was allowed to use Leopard on a computer that wasn’t Apple-labeled, Pedraza said "we’re going to do it whether Steve Jobs likes it or not."

Uh oh. Talk about asking for treble damages. Well. When you're in your early 20s, sometimes you talk like that. Could there be more to this story than just a couple of kids tilting at windmills? Of course. And I'll keep my eyes open. But I don't believe there is a link to the securities fraud people, or at least none that I can find.


  


Psystar - Who Are These People? | 244 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections here...
Authored by: feldegast on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 10:04 AM EDT
So they can be fixed

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2008 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off-Topic discussions
Authored by: stegu on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 10:20 AM EDT
Please keep your posts off topic, and use HTML clickies if you present any
links. Discussions that accidentally become relevant to the main subject are
tolerated, but frowned upon.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News picks
Authored by: stegu on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 10:23 AM EDT
Comments and discussions on news picks go here. Please change the title of your
post to indicate which story you are commenting on.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Psystar - Who Are These People?
Authored by: Shadow Wrought on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 12:30 PM EDT
IANAL, but I think this could end up challenging the whoel idea of licenses
themselves. The entire notion that you don't actually have control over what
you purchase is I think inherently flawed, and it would not surprise me if the
Courts eventually agreed. Especially now that they are becoming more tech
savvy.

---
"It's a summons." "What's a summons?" "It means summon's in trouble." -- Rocky
and Bullwink

[ Reply to This | # ]

Psystar - Who Are These People?
Authored by: sclark46 on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 12:55 PM EDT
I worked for a company called Data General that lost a case of illegal tying
because they refused to sell their RDOS operating system unless you bought a
computer from them. They had failed to patent the instruction set for their
computers so other companies were making clones. Is tying of an OS to a
particular machine now allowed?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Psystar - Who Are These People?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 02:32 PM EDT
What we need to make this case interesting is background on what constitutes
"illegal tying" so we can determine whether or not the
counter-claimants have a sustainable case on antitrust grounds. i.e. whether the
EULA condition that Apple's OS may only be run on Apple's hardware constitutes
illegal tying. This assumes, of course, that the Psystar's pockets are deep
enough to go toe-to-toe with Apple, which may be moot.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is Psystar Going To Get Rich?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 05:29 PM EDT
Hopefully Psystar has a good lawyer. Make that.... a very good lawyer. Be
interesting to see what the judgement is. I'm guessing there won't be a
judgement because Apple will settle (if it looks like Apple will lose). By
settling I
mean buying Psystar. Which might have been Psystar intention all along - who
knows!!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Apple - who are these leeches?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 07:54 PM EDT
Apple are one of the nastiest, greediest, litiganist computer companies in
existence - and always have been. I'm rather appalled at how many in the 'open
sauce' world bother to give them the time of day, let alone evangelise their
products.

If the US system wasn't so corrupt this suit would surely be thrown out - tying
is illegal plain and simple. But alas, we all know money can do what it pleases
in your country - just look at what mickysoft keeps getting away with.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Protecting Apple
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 03 2008 @ 11:01 PM EDT
One way to protect Mac OS X from leeches such as Psystar is pricing.

Mac OS X should be priced like Microsoft's Vista.

This means:
1. New Mac OS X = $500
2. Upgrade Mac OS X = $125.

This means if a cloner wanted to install Mac OS X on a PC without Apple's
permission, they would have to cough up $500 per machine.

---

Apple should also do machine checking before installing Mac OS X. For
example, every Mac has a known configuration of hardware.
Rather than just checking the machine's identity, the installation software
should also check for the hardware configuration - the CPU, etc.

With Mac OS Leopard supporting only Intel CPUs, it's installer would obviously
check for CPU. Now it can check for more.

---

The installation software should also have to link with Apple via the internet
in order to activate the software.

---

OS Updates can also be done via software downloads rather than on physical
DVDs. This can be done through the iTunes Music Store, with an account and
a credit card. 4D does their installations this way with their database
software. There is no physical DVD to be sold to would-be cloners. The
speed of the internet makes this strongly possible.

---

Tying the software to hardware is not traditional tying since Apple does the
entire widget.

If one argues that Apple's operating systems can't be tied to the hardware,
then does this mean also that the iPhone's OS can be used without Apple's
permission on other cell phones?

---

Apple should include custom designed chips as it has in the past for its audio
chips. Coding for this would require different routines and code than for
generic Intel hardware. This would make the OS automatically unable to run
on generic hardware.

---

Apple should purchase nVidia. Then Apple can do custom GPUs for itself - or
even stop making generic PC versions. This would make it very difficult to
make a clone.

---

If you don't like Apple, get a Linux machine or even a Windows PC.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Apple - worse than M$?
Authored by: Stevieboy on Thursday, September 04 2008 @ 06:15 AM EDT
At least Microsoft don't tie you to an M$ computer.

Thank God for that. Imagine an M$ computer:

1. Would have a card swipe for every time you wanted to do something valuable on
it.

2. Would crash several times a day as a matter of course.

3. Would self destruct after a certain period of time or if you tried to
upgrade it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Psystar - Who Are These People?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 04 2008 @ 08:18 AM EDT
Do they have a legal right to stop you selling a license that you own?

I.e. can they stop you selling a Mac with OS X installed on it because you are
not an approved seller of Macs?

Can the RIAA stop me selling my DVDs? (Actaully no they can't as I'm in GB, but
that's not what I mean!)

JRW

[ Reply to This | # ]

Did Psystar install software? Did they protect themselves when they reverse engineered the OSX?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 05 2008 @ 10:17 AM EDT
Too me it is seems like there are quite many things that complicate this case.

That a copyright holder might make conditions on the license for a software that
restrict use of the software is kind of given. On the other hand it is not quite
clear that they in a EULA, aka something you only read after the sale, can make
restrictions that tie to it being an apple computer. After all it seems like
one way the customer could verify his computer is an "apple computer"
is by running the install program and see if OSX recognize the hardware as apple
one. Another possibility is by looking at the computer and see if there is a
shiny apple logo somewhere. Not being a lawyer I have no idea how trademark law
and copyright law interact, but how is the end user to know how to verify his
computer is apple hardware if this is not specified?

The second thing that complicates thing is that the Apple EULA is for end users.
The GPL is written so that the restrictions apply to anyone who get a copy in
their hand and breaking the conditions will remove the license. Psystar on the
other hand might argue that they are not an end user, don't need an license
since they just resell the software. If they actually installed the OSX on the
sold machinces they are pretty much without a chance since they would need to
accept themselves to be end users to complete the install...but if it is the
final customer that did the install this defense might work.

Finally there is reason to wonder how Psystar managed to get their hardware to
give the proper responses so that it identify itself as mac hardware to the OSX.
This is actually one of the more critical points. If they can't prove that their
modified bios was written by persons that had only access to specifications of
how OSX work and not the actual reverse engineered code that is needed to write
such code they are pretty much done for.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Psystar - making them irrelevant
Authored by: raybellis on Tuesday, September 09 2008 @ 07:03 AM EDT
Apple could make Psystar disappear altogether if only they actually sold a
reasonably priced desktop machine.

There's clearly a demand for something between the Mac mini and the MacPro, and
that isn't built into an all-in-one with a screen like the iMac.

I have Logic Pro and currently run it on my (work) MacBook Pro. I want to run
it on a desktop at home, but a £500 Mac mini is too slow and not expandable, and
a £1429 Mac Pro (which is the cheapest possible configuration) is vast
overkill.

When a decent spec system with a 2.4 GHz quad core processor, 2 GB of RAM and a
reasonable GPU can be built for just under £400 (albeit without an O/S) I
wouldn't even pay the £500 for a mini, let alone nearly three times that for a
Pro.

However if Apple were to produce a Mac "Lite" for something like £600
I'd bite their arm off for it! I know several other people with the same view,
too.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.05 seconds