Doral

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed charges from Mac clone maker Psystar accusing Apple of running a monopoly. Psystar sued Apple in U.S. District Court claiming violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act.

The Doral, Fla.-based Psystar accused Apple of forcing a tie between the Mac OS X operating system and Apple's hardware in the end-user licensing agreement. Psystar argued that Apple's EULA unlawfully restrained trade by barring users from installing its operating system on non-Apple hardware.

Psystar, the plucky Mac cloner in Doral, Fla,, has thrown down the gauntlet and countersued Apple. At a small press conference in the office of Psystar's attorneys in Palo Alto, Calif., the lawyers said they have answered Apple's original lawsuit filed July 3 and upped the ante by filing one of their own in a Northern California federal court.

Psystar's View

The mysterious company that claims to be selling a clone of Apple Macintosh computers posted a message on its Web site Thursday proclaiming that it is a legitimate company -- and that its credit-card processor has been unable to handle a flood of orders. But many bloggers and observers suspect the company may be a fraud and warned consumers to stay away.