Apple and Psystar presented oral arguments on Monday afternoon for Apple's permanent injunction motion to block the PC maker from building or selling Mac clones and other products that let customers install Mac OS X on PCs. Psystar has already stopped sales of its Mac clones, but if Judge Alsup rules in Apple's favor the injunction will permanently kill the company's plans of distributing its Rebel EFI tool to circumvent Mac OS X's copy protection scheme.
Apple filed its motion for a permanent injunction after Judge Alsup ruled in a summary judgement that Psystar infringed on Apple's copyrights by selling PCs with Mac OS X installed, and it violated the DMCA by circumventing the code that binds Mac OS X to Apple hardware.
Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in Northern California several months ago claiming the small PC maker was violating the Mac OS X end user license agreement, and that it was violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with the steps it used to install the Mac operating system on PCs. Psystar claimed that it should be allowed to build and sell PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed and that Apple is overstepping its bounds by blocking companies from selling Mac clones.
Both Apple and Psystar presented their oral arguments regarding the permanent injunction request on Monday afternoon. There isn't any word on when to expect the court to issue a ruling on the injunction motion, but Judge Alsup has had the completed briefings from both sides since December 8.
Since the written arguments related to the injunction have been in the Judge's hands for days, a ruling could come at any time.
Should the court rule to block all Mac OS X and clone-related products from Psystar, that could potentially derail the parallel case the company started in Florida. Psystar has been hoping to take on Apple in Florida in an effort to keep at least some of its Mac clone business alive.
A sweeping injunction in the California case could be enough to kill Psystar's hopes of keeping its legal battle in Florida on track. It isn't, however, enough to completely destroy the company's legal strategy since it plans to appeal Judge Alsup's rulings and potentially drag out the case even longer.