Psystar brags about deposing Apple executives – do they realize what’s at stake?

Mon, Aug 17, 2009

Legal, News

Sometimes you have to wonder if Psystar is actually aware that they’re in the midst of a lawsuit that could potentially send their employees to jail (for purposefully deleting evidence).  Often times, it seems that Psystar’s main priorities include posturing up for the sake of publicity and pointless attempts to mock Apple.

Most recently, Psystar bragged on the “community” section of its blog that Apple is in for “a taste of their own medicine.”  Specifically, Psystar brags about some upcoming depositions with some higher ups at Apple.

We are pleased to announce that an agreement with Apple’s counsel was reached earlier this month and we now have the final list of their deponents for our proposed topics with respect to this litigation. For the past week and for the following ten days we will be doing depositions of some of Apple’s highest level people. After numerous depositions of Psystar employees and associates the shoe is finally on the other foot, oh the joy!

They’re “pleased to announce”?  Is someone at Psystar getting married or something?

And as for deposing Apple employees, that’s how things work in the discovery process of a legal case.  Each side deposes the opposing party.  But Psystar, for whatever reason, is celebrating this uneventful and frequent occurrence as if it constitutes some sort of legal victory.

But as with anything involving Psystar, the story doesn’t end there.  Psystar goes on to solicit deposition questions from its readers to ask Apple’s employees!

Now given that there is a significant interest in this litigation aside from the business interest of Psystar, in particularly those of the OSX86 community and others; we want all your input. On that note we’re taking the top ten most highly moderated questions for each person to be asked at their depositions. Please bear in mind that these must relate to the litigation at hand and if you feel this correlation is unclear, please elaborate to help us better understand your perspective and/or argument.

Is Psystar’s legal counsel so completely out of the loop that Psystar is resorting to the first ever instance of a company crowdsourcing deposition questions?  We realize that Psystar wants to fight Apple with “guns blazin'”, but Psystar seems to be pointing their guns at themselves at this point.

Psystar is embroiled in a serious legal case with prison implications, and they’re busy running contests for deposition questions as if they were running a MTV.com fan contest to meet P. Diddy.

Below is the list of Apple employees Psystar is scheduled to depose.  Notably, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing is on the list, and if things went as scheduled, he was deposed late last week.

Aug. 07 — John Wright — OS X — Senior Software Manager

Aug. 12 — Kevin Van Vechten — OS X — Software Engineering Manager

Aug. 13 — Phil Schiller — Marketing — Senior VP Worldwide Product Marketing

Aug. 14 — Mike Culbert — Mac Hardware — Senior Director

Aug. 18 — Gary Thomas — TBD

Aug. 19 — Simon Patience — OS X — Head of Core OS

Aug. 21 — Mark Donnelly — Apple — VP Finance and Worldwide Business management

Aug. 21 — Greg Christie — TBD

Aug. 21 — Mansfield — Mac Hardware — Senior VP Mac Hardware Engineering

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4 Comments For This Post

  1. Olternaut Says:

    It’s as if we’re witnessing a real life sitcom or comedic movie. Imagine any comedy set in a courtroom and this is what we’re witnessing.

    Either their dumb or insane. I’m starting to think the Psystar people are actually insane.

  2. CapnVan Says:

    No doubt the judge will be very pleased with this development. One gets the feeling that Alsup’s already more than mildly annoyed with Psystar’s antics so far.

  3. MT Says:

    Pystar will whine and posture until their last employee is dragged away, kicking and screaming, into a minimum-security prison — and they will be. The silver lining here is that a lot of whiny brats in the open-source community will learn that the law is not a joke.

  4. hey whoa Says:

    Looky here, the osx86 project does NOT break any laws.

    Except the DMCA, which would not hold up in court. So they aren’t whiny little brats, OK?

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