A federal judge dismissed Psystar’s countersuit accusing Apple of anticompetitive business practices, moving the ball in Apple’s court once more. According to the 19-page ruling, Judge William Alsup was not convinced by Psystar’s arguments, leaving the company only 20 more days to bring more legal support to its claims.

In spring this year, stories of a company selling cheap Mac clones running OS X Leopard made the news. As Apple’s immediate reaction was nowhere to be found, Psystar began claiming it had all the right to sell the Mac clones, and that Apple has created a monopoly on the market, a matter that should be settled in court.

That sounded rather strange coming from a company that was at risk of being sued by Apple for violating the Leopard end-user license agreement (EULA), which prohibits the installation of the software on third party hardware. The follow-up was a legal suit from Apple, which did not materialize until July 3rd.

According to court documents filed by Apple, Psystar was accused of violating the terms of the Software License Agreement regarding the use of Mac OS X software and Apple’s intellectual property. Furthermore, Apple argued in its claims that Psystar was responsible for advertising and promoting products in manners that affect the Apple brand, by offering consumers poor quality products.

Consequently, Apple demanded full statutory damages for what they called "the willful act" of copyright infringement, an injunction against Psystar for continuing the production and distribution of Apple copyrighted materials, as well as the recall of all products.

Psystar’s reaction was not exactly an unexpected one. The clone-makers filed a countersuit accusing Apple of anticompetitive business practices, arguing that Apple’s policy to use the Mac operating system exclusively on Apple hardware is “an anticompetitive restraint of trade.”

Furthermore, Psystar argued last month that although the two companies have agreed to resort to the Alternative Dispute Resolution to settle the matter, mere mediation is not likely to solve the dispute. But back then, Psystar was also very confident that the countersuit would not get dismissed as Apple demanded in October this year.

In the most recent legal action against the clone-maker, Apple pleaded for the dismissal of the “deeply flawed” countersuit filed by Psystar on the ground that it was nothing but an attempt to get away with something they knew was wrong.

All the arguing about Apple’s anticompetitive practices led Psystar to absolutely nothing apparently, after judge William Alsup found Apple was in no violation of the Sherman, Clayton or Cartwright Acts. In addition to that, the judge found Psystar to make contradictory claims throughout the countersuit, and fail to provide the necessary arguments to support these claims, therefore granting Apple’s motion to dismiss the counterclaims.