Embattled Mac clone maker Psystar has changed its legal team to better make its case that Apple's copyright for OS X doesn't extend to hardware. The Doral, Fla.-based system builder has also launched a new online community through which it plans to interact more directly with customers and the media than it has in the past.
In an email newsletter distributed Tuesday, Psystar said it has hired Texas-based legal firm Camara & Sibley LLP to lead its ongoing legal fight with Apple. Psystar also said it has nothing to hide and plans to battle Apple in an open and public fashion.
"We buy hundreds of copies of OS X legally, from retailers like Amazon and Apple itself. We're probably one of Apple's biggest customers," Psystar said in the email. "Then we install these copies of OS X, along with kernel extensions that we wrote in-house, on computers that we buy and build. Then we resell the package to people like you."
Psystar's new community site wasn't processing registrations as of Tuesday afternoon Pacific time, but the company claims it will serve as a repository for the open source extensions it develops that allow OS X to run on non-Apple hardware.
"We will also be transitioning all open source materials from Psystar to the community site and are developing a wiki to better explain and perhaps even standardize methods for running OS X on generic Intel hardware," Psystar said in the email.
Psystar's legal tussle with Apple began last July when Apple filed a copyright infringement suit against Psystar for selling a $399 Mac clone with OS X preinstalled. Psystar's countersuit accusing Apple of antitrust violations was dismissed, but since then Psystar has tried a variety of different tactics in an attempt to convince the court to render Apple's stranglehold on Mac OS hardware null and void.
Psystar filed for bankruptcy in May, but emerged from a six week silence at the beginning of July with an email newsletter that claimed it was "ready to emerge and again battle Goliath."
