Apple legal team swats video showing pre-release Leopard

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 1 Sep 2006 at 11:38

Apple has asked a website to remove a link to a YouTube video displaying how Exposé works in the pre-release version of OS X 10.5.

In an email to the crunchgear.com website - headed 'not for posting' - a lawyer for the computer company requested that the video be removed and ask the site's author to prevent any further distribution of videos or screenshots of Apple software without authorisation.

'While we appreciate your interest in Leopard, it has not yet been released to the public,' wrote attorney Ian Ramage of law firm O'Melveny & Myers. 'The software demonstrated in the video must therefore be running on a pre-release developer's build of OS X 10.5. All such builds have been distributed to developers under strict terms of confidentiality that prohibit the dissemination of screenshots or other displays of the software.'

Ramage explains that Leopard builds are copyrighted by Apple and that US law 'explicitly prohibits unauthorised displays of copyrighted works'.

Crunchgear has removed the video.