A judge has denied Apple's request to keep certain court documents sealed in its copyright infringement case against Mac clone maker Psystar. In a late Tuesday filing, US District Judge William Alsup ordered that portions of the parties' summary judgement be unsealed and filed publicly without any redaction. The ruling came after another judge's comments in September, who argued that Apple had failed to articulate specific reasons for the documents to remain sealed.

Apple and Psystar have been engaging in a legal battle since July of 2008, with Apple arguing that Psystar was violating Apple's copyrights by selling non-Macs with Mac OS X installed. Psystar attempted to defend itself by arguing that the OS X licensing agreement was an "unlawful attempt to extend copyright protection to products that are not copyrightable." Apple eventually won its copyright case, as well as an appeal from Psystar, but Apple maintained that its summary judgements should stay sealed for fear of publishing trade secrets about OS X's functionality.

As part of the appeals ruling in September 2011, Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote that Apple had not provided sufficient reason to keep the documents sealed, vacating and remanding that part of the original ruling for further consideration. And now, it appears that Judge Alsup agrees: in his ruling from Tuesday, Alsup noted that Apple's own VP of Core OS Software admitted that third parties "may have accurately deduced and published" the information that remains under seal, and that Apple itself is aware that some of the information is publicly available.

"It is unnecessary to go through the entire record and list every instance where Apple is seeking to seal information that is publicly available. There are too many examples," Alsup wrote in his ruling. "Apple cannot have this Court seal information merely to avoid confirming that the publicly available sources got it right."