Apple forgot to copyright OSX, outfit claims

Did you notice the date of filing?
It looks like it was filed in January 2008.
Pystar was using OSX prior to this date. Unfortunately if this is accurate that means that their bottom feeders... I mean lawyers are correct.
You cannot copyright something after the fact and sue based on that.

Again that is if that entry in the DB is accurate and there are no mitigating circumstances.

Wow, the author calls Psystar a parasite. Where's the editor of this damn site?

If COMPAQ et al were allowed to reverse engineer and clone an IBM-PC because IBM was too careless and used off-the-shelf parts to build it, I don't see why Apple should be treated differently. Nowadays the Mac is just an off-the-shelf PC and the EFI "BIOS", that doesn't even belong to Apple, is being emulated without any Apple copyrighted parts. If a person buys a legit copy of MacOS, he/she has the right to install it wherever he/she wants, as long as it's installed in only one computer and no illegal copies are made.

Myself sez: "If COMPAQ et al were allowed to reverse engineer and clone an IBM-PC..."

There are a number of misconceptions in this sentence, but let's go with the easiest one... if Apple has included any kind of copy protection in the OS, no matter how trivial, then breaking it for any purpose is illegal under the DMCA. The DMCA did not exist prior to 1998, and so would not have applied to Compaq et al.

"If a person buys a legit copy of MacOS, he/she has the right to install it wherever he/she wants, as long as it's installed in only one computer and no illegal copies are made."

Absolutely true! But what you can't do is what Psystar appears to be doing -- sell copies of it.

Psystar is making a claim that even non-legal people who deal with copyright issues know is false: that you have to register copyright for it to exist. Registering makes court cases a bit easier, by establishing a legal "date of publication," but it is in no way required for the copyright to be valid.

Psystar is clearly and obviously wrong on this. There's not even a gray area.

This looks suspiciously like the old IBM practice of "bindling", where you had to buy IBM hardware to use IBM software. Didn't the US DOJ and US courts ban this practice?

this "reporting" demonstrates complete ignorance of copyright law and litigation.

As a copyright and trademark expert, it is important to note that software is automatically covered by copyright as it is written. Just as a book is. It is not necessary to formally record. A trademark is different. You must always flag your trademark to protect it. It is also important to note that IBM was prevented by law from selling its hardware and operating system as a single item. To this date, IBM sells two items, the hardware and the operating system. YOu can buy the hardware without the operating system but theirs is the only operating system that will run on the hardware. (iSeries, AS/400, System38, System36) If find it odd that Apple is doing what IBM cant.

that people are making here is the assumption that "If a person buys a legit copy of MacOS, he/she has the right to install it wherever he/she wants". Firstly it is not possible to buy a legit full copy of MacOS. All you can buy are UPGRADE copies. Try selling Windows machines with hacked upgrade versions of Windows on them and see how long it takes MS to set the lawyers on you.
Secondly what you are buying is a licence to use. That licence may specify all sorts of conditions (like country of use, no permissions to reverse engineer/de-compile, maximum number of machines that you may install it on etc). There's plenty of case law to say what can and can't be specified here. If you don't agree with the licence conditions then there's normally a clause that lets you return the software. If you agree to the conditions and breach them then your right to use is forfeit. MacOS makes you agree to the conditions before it will install, and one of these is not to install on non Apple hardware.
Psystar are basically scr*wed.

To be clear, a copyright holder must formally register a coypright before filing a lawsuit based on that copyright. It does look like Apple did that, so the point is moot.

Isn't much of OSX covered by the BSD license? How does that affect this?

The BSD license allows for source code and/or binary releases provided certain conditions are met. Read for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license

I might understand a little bit about what Psystar is claiming. Until a copyright holder properly registers the copyright with the applicable government authorities, the copyright holder, whether corporate or individual, cannot receive punitive damages for any copyright infringement the other party in the case was responsible for. Punitive damages are the big multi-million dollar amounts that can be awarded. The next largest amount of damages that could be assigned is compensatory damages, statutory damages, and the plaintiff's lawyers fees. Still I have a feeling that those damage awards might still easily bankrupt Psystar.

If this is the case, not registering the copyright for MacOS X is a seriously big facepalm moment for Apple. It is extremely easy to register copyrights and there is no reason not to register. One of the reasons it is so easy to register was that when it was more difficult to register, some corporations would infringe on the copyrights of individuals, and would game the system with impunity.

Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer, but this seem to be a simple trap for anyone to fall into with respect to their own created and copyrighted work. If the work is of possible value, keep this in mind.

The author of this article does not seem to know the difference between copyrighting and registering a copyright.

Damon, I was looking for a more insightful analysis than you or the Wikipedia article provide. I guess I'll have to go into more detail. Several articles suggest that the focus of Apple's complaint is the disabling of code which locks the system to Apple hardware. It seems to me that this boils down to complaining that Psystar has prowled BSD-licensed code in order to remove some code that was not BSD-licensed. In other words, I'm wondering about a theory that they didn't modify some possibly Apple copyrighted code -- they removed such code from from a larger segment of code that they had every right to use or modify.

http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=4&ti=1,4&Search%5FArg=Mac%20OS%20X%20Leopard&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=-H_wcyyigtEZ3UT-QtRpXsTJUefv&SEQ=20081222171112&SID=1

Per the article, thats the registered copyright at the US Copyright Office.

Firstly it is not possible to buy a legit full copy of MacOS. All you can buy are UPGRADE copies.

One of the first windows that comes up on Leopard's installation asks how you want to install... One of the options is to erase your hard drive, and then install the new operating system from scratch...

that upgrade copies of Windows don't allow clean installs also. Yes they do, see http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp
If you don't have an existing copy of Windows though you are breaking the EULA, just like installing OSX on a non Apple machine.