U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup has denied Apple’s request to seal some information it considers trade secrets in its legal battle with the unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar. Apple had hoped to convince the court that the documents should be kept sealed even though the information they contain is already available on the Internet.
Psystar’s only legal win: Apple documents won’t stay sealed
Apple didn’t deny that the information was already available or that it had been leaked or stolen before appearing on websites, according to Bloomberg. The Cupertino company’s legal team argued that it never confirmed the information was legit, so it still qualified as trade secrets.
Judge Alsup, however, disagreed. “Apple cannot have this court seal information merely to avoid confirmation that the publicly available sources got it right,” he said.
Apple slapped Psystar with a lawsuit in July 2008 alleging the computer maker was building and selling Mac clones without authorization. The lawsuit claimed Psystar was violating Apple copyrights and end user license agreement, and eventually added a DMCA complaint on top of those.
Psystar countered with an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, but that was eventually shot down by the court.
The little clone maker ran through two law firms during the course of its legal headaches before settling on K.A.D. Camera of Camera & Sibley. In the end, Psystar filed bankruptcy, and Apple was awarded a complete victory in court, complete with an injunction blocking the little company from selling Mac clones, Mac OS X in any form, installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, and more.
Despite Psystar’s complete smackdown — and lack of money — the company appealed the ruling and lost. Now Psystar is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, too.
The company hasn’t said yet whether or not it really will push for a new appeal, but considering its track record so far, it probably will, and ultimately will be disappointed with the court’s ruling.