Last week, I wrote about Psystar's release of its Open Computer 3, wondering why exactly the company would do so even in the midst of its litigation with Apple. Some suggested it was nothing more than a big marketing stunt. Others, like attorney and writer Gary Kaplan, said Psystar is probably operating on "a hope of making it too costly for Apple to maintain full control over its systems, regardless of any right to do so."

Tuesday I talked to Madison Spach Jr., a partner in the law firm of Spach, Capaldi & Waggaman. In addition to decades of experience in business litigation, Spach also uses Macs in his offices, so he has kept a close eye on the Apple-Psystar dispute. His views aren't far from Kaplan's. He notes:

Psystar sees that market [for less-expensive OS X boxes] opening and is attempting to exploit that market since there's no injunction preventing it from doing so. If Psystar itself has resources, it can devote them to the manufacture of the machines and making what money it can.

On the other side, Apple is simply trying to protect its hardware and software brands, Spach says. So Apple wants to stop Psystar from modifying OS X so that it can run on non-Apple hardware. It isn't really about collecting damages. If Psystar loses, there will be few resources from which damages could be collected.

But Apple's brands -- both hardware and software -- are well worth protecting, Spach says.