I am finding this difficult to believe given that “The Steve” has an army of iLawyers working for him. But the latest claim that embattled Mac clone maker Psystar is making is that Apple forgot to copyright OS X 10.5 which means they can copy it:
Apple “is prohibited from bringing action against Psystar for the alleged infringement of one or more of the plaintiff’s copyrights for failure to register said copyrights with the copyright office as required” by law, Psystar claims.
Oh yeah, Psystar claims that OS X 10.5 contains undocumented code that keeps the OS from running on non-Apple hardware. Infoweek is looking into the claims, but I think that Psystar is grasping at straws at this point. IANAL but my understanding of the law in this regard is this: Registration is not required to secure a copyright on a work. Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created. So the very fact that OS X 10.5 exists is a copyright. There’s more on this concept at this link. But I’ll quote this paragraph from that link which illustrates my point:
“Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.”
However to sue Psystar, Apple must have registered their copyright on OS X 10.5 beforehand. Which given the legal power that Apple has at its disposal, it would be incredible if they didn’t.
The bottom line. I think that Psystar should be dead shortly. But of course, IANAL. But if you are a lawyer, please leave a comment and correct me if I am mistaken.