Court denies Apple request to seal docs in Psystar case

No one was surprised last year when Apple put all its weight on the head of Psystar. Psystar is the firm that was openly selling a Mac clone computer system that ran official OS X software. Apple retaliated with the claim that Psystar was violating licensing requirements for its software. Apple and Psystar came to a settlement agreement, and Psystar was effectively dead after that.

The case is still ongoing and Apple has now lost a bid to get the courts to keep documents sealed from the public that related to details on the OS X operating system, and the technological protection measures that Apple uses. The data that Apple wanted sealed was already in the wild from other sources. The details in the court documents related to thermal management techniques and integrity checks. Apple fears that the information could allow other firms to do what Psystar did and sell clone computers.

Bloomberg reports that Apple argued the details already online about OS X were not from it, but from other sources and therefore, its official data was still a trade secret. Judge William Alsup denied the request and said that Apple could not ask for documents in the case to be sealed just to keep from confirming that third parties were correct. There has been no official statement from Apple at this point on losing the bid to seal the court documents.

[via Bloomberg]