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EFiX Mac clone aborted amid legal concerns
Stephen Withers
Monday, 15 December 2008 04:49
Page 1 of 2
Yet another would be Mac cloner has shelved plans to bring a product to market amid claims the whole thing was a misunderstanding. EFiX USA planned a family of high-performance PCs that could be used to run Mac OS X with the aid of an optional extra, but later reversed its decision in a highly public turnaround.Late last week, news emerged that EFiX USA planned to offer a range of PCs name Millennium that would be based on hardware similar to that used by Apple and with the prospect of plugging in the EFI-X USB dongle in order to run Mac OS X.
The only relationship between EFiX USA and the EFI-X development team appears to be that it is the North American distributor of EFI-X products.
The EFI-X trademark is owned by Art Studios Entertainment Media, which - according to its web site - was founded by Wilhelm von Vnukov. The efi-x.com domain is registered in the name Vilhelm Vnukov.
In what looked like an attempt to stave off legal problems with Apple, EFIX USA's plan was that the dongle would not be available as a pre-installed option.
But the company appears to have had second thoughts, apparently of the legal kind.
An article reproduced on EFiX USA's web site quotes Davide Rutigliano, CEO of Art Studios Entertainment Media as describing the situation as "a monstrous misunderstanding" and that he "immediately ordered it [Millennium] to be scraped [sic] and abandoned... we will NEVER sell machines or condone the sale of machines that compete with any brand."
EFiX USA officials stated "Millennium project is definitely abandoned, and EFIX USA LLC fights the clones and the clonemakers."
Yet EFiX USA continues to sell the EFi-X USB device for $US199.99, stating that it supports "Apple OS X 10.5 and higher version" along with Windows and Linux.
So what is EFi-X, and what are some of the legal issues? Please read on.
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