Mac Clone Renegade Psystar Files For Bankruptcy

Psystar, the Miami-based firm known for tenaciously selling Mac clones in contravention of Apple's Mac OS X licensing terms, has filed for bankruptcy, a development that will temporarily delay Apple's efforts to sue the maverick startup into oblivion.

In a bankruptcy filing last week, available here, Psystar cites the same economic factors that have pulled many other bankrupt companies under the waves.

"Debtor sales have been greatly affected by the decrease in consumer spending. The financial crisis has also caused creditors to tighten up their terms and become more demanding for immediate payment," Psystar said in a court filing.

Of course, Psystar can't claim to have a business model that's even remotely conventional. Psystar has been operating under the specter of litigation since last July, when Apple filed a copyright infringement suit against the company for selling a $399 Mac clone with OS X preinstalled.

Psystar subsequently filed a countersuit accusing Apple of antitrust violations, which was dismissed in November by a federal judge in California. Since then, Psystar has come up with increasingly bizarre claims and follow-up suits aimed at convincing the court to break Apple's stranglehold on Mac OS hardware.

Last December, Psystar accused Apple of illegally manipulating OS X so that it wouldn't boot correctly on non-Apple hardware, and also claimed Apple constructed its End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) to force users to buy Apple-branded hardware. Later that month, Psystar claimed that Apple never actually obtained a copyright for OS X, and therefore couldn't sue Psystar for copyright infringement.

In March, the defiant Psystar launched Open(3), a $599 Mac clone preinstalled with OS X that is also compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Ubuntu Linux, Fedora 9 and CentOS.

The vigor with which Psystar has pursued its claims has led some to speculate that the company has backing from Apple's competitors, and that these backers may have finally realized that Psystar's case isn't winnable and withdrawn financial support.

Apple's as-yet unresolved case against Psystar will be delayed while the courts work through the bankruptcy filing, in which Psystar estimated its debt at more than $250,000, about a third of which is payable to Carr & Farrell, the company's legal firm.