Edible Apple

After hearing from both Apple and Psystar, U.S. District Court Judge Alsup refused to dismiss Psystar’s newly brought lawsuit in Florida and denied Apple’s motion to re-open discovery in the current case to include issues pertaining to OS X Snow Leopard.

If you recall, Psystar recently filed a lawsuit in Florida seeking an injunction against Apple that would preclude it from tying Snow Leopard to Apple hardware. Moreover, Psystar’s suit seeks a court order which would allow it to sell copies of Apple’s latest OS on Psystar hardware, in addition to claims that Apple has a monopoly in the market for Unix based premium computers.

Apple, naturally, sought to have the lawsuit in Florida dismissed, arguing that the issues raised there had either already been dismissed in the California case or were still at issue.  That being the case, Apple wanted to re-open discovery in the California case so that it could further investigate how Psystar gets Snow Leopard to run on its machines. Judge Alsup, however, didn’t see things Apple’s way, and noted that Apple fought hard to keep issues pertaining to Snow Leopard outside of the realm of the current case, and that it’s now too late to backtrack and re-open discovery.

In his ruling, Alsup stated:

Some discovery was permitted on Snow Leopard by Apple, but it was adamant that Snow Leopard was not relevant (due to its status as an unreleased product).

… If Snow Leopard was within the scope of its own complaint herein, as it now suggests, then Apple should have welcomed discovery theron rather than, as it did, object to discovery directed at Snow Leopard and effectively taking Snow Leopard out of the case. Apple even chose when to release Snow Leopard and it chose to do so after all opportunity to take discovery on it had ended. The problem is largely one of Apple’s own making.

Judge Alsup’s ruling, however, doesn’t rule out the eventual possibility of a case consolidation, but it certainly doesn’t make it seem likely.

Trial is looming early next year. It would now be too prejudicial and too disruptive to re-open the case on the theory that maybe the other action will come here too… This is without prejudice to any motion before Judge Hoeveler to transfer the Florida action here, as to which this order expresses no opinion and is without prejudice, in the event of a transfer, to a new motion to modify the case management schedule.

With Snow Leopard now officially outside the purview of the current California litigation, the Florida case will proceed forward, though Psystar is likely to run into the same legal brick walls that have already knocked it unconscious in California.