“Apple Inc wants to go to trial to defend itself against U.S. government allegations that it conspired with publishers to raise prices of electronic books, a lawyer for the Silicon Valley giant said in court on Wednesday,” Grant McCool reports for Reuters.
“Two publishers took a similar stance in the first hearing in Manhattan federal court since the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice last week accused Apple and five publishers of colluding to break up Amazon.com’s low-cost dominance of the digital book market,” McCool reports. “The publishers are Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, and Pearson Plc’s Penguin Group. Settlements with the other three publishers — HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Simon & Schuster Inc and Hachette Book Group — were announced a week ago.”
McCool reports, “‘Our basic view is that we would like the case to be decided on the merits,’ Apple lawyer, Daniel Floyd, told U.S. District Judge Denise Cote. ‘We believe that this is not an appropriate case against us and we would like to validate that.’ The judge scheduled the next hearing for June 22.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bring it on!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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GO GET ‘EM, APPLE! I think DOJ’s case, as usual, is unjust and one of many situations they need to keep their nose out of it. I’ve never seen an administration usurp their powers over things that are none of their business. I think we still have issues currently haunting the US like poverty, corruption, etc
With this DOJ “anything” can happen. Apple may have rationality on their side, but that’s not how the Holder DOJ operates.
For example when the former administration admitted to committing war crimes in violation of domestic and international law: Holder did nothing, when rationality would dictate the DOJ uphold the law.
When the government colludes with banks to gouge customers and then cover up by bailing the banks in the tune of billions of dollars, the DoJ is nowhere around. The nation went bankrupt and the DoJ could not be able to charge a single culprit for the colossal financial fiasco.
When the government colludes with other governments to manipulate the exchange rates to cover up its incompetency to raise the standard of US competitiveness, the whole nation suffers.
When the government colludes with Big Oil by treating it with kid’s glove, it weakens the development of alternative energy.
These are all systematic collusion on the part of the government and yet the DoJ could not see the plank. Instead it is digging in the haystack for a needle. The DoJ is picking a monopolist, Amazon, as the administration’s champion to show that it is fighting for the little people, i.e. the reading public. In the face of a bankrupt nation and the states, perhaps by selectively persecuting Apple, they are able to extort money which they could not be able to get from Amazon. The DoJ is a clueless bureaucracy adding to the incompetency of politicians to solve the real problems of the nation.
Right on.
Amen to your statement. Amen.
Apple ain’t gonna take it like no Martha Stewart either…
There’s also the difference of guilt.
true but the same scapegoat and diversion motives
Send in the Secret Service with $47.
We lose that Hussein fella and his moron lapdog Attorney General in less than 7 months. Hussein is worse than that idiot fool loser Jimmy Carter.
Isn’t Al Gore supposed to be the guy who can keep the Democrats off Apple’s back? WTF, Al?
I hope Apple takes this all the way to the Supreme Court.
There s gotta be a way to find out if a free market still exists in America or if the commies have taken over.
I seriously doubt EH instigated and is personally overseeing this case regardless of the unfounded suggestions posted above. Certainly the President is not involved at all. This case, like most DOJ cases, is likely working up through the system not down. Want to assign blame? Look to Amazon and its army of well-compensated lawyers who certainly prepared what on the surface appears to be a price-fixing case and brought it to the DOJ. I am glad to hear Apple and others will fight it and show that Amazon is the one trying to establish a monopoly. I am tired of seeing everything that can even remotely and mostly not even credibly traced to Obama cast as a conspiracy or secret plan to bring down or interfer with things we hold dear.
+1