“‘I’m not comfortable discussing the contents of that meeting.’ That’s what Russell Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president for Kindle content, said when asked in court Friday about a meeting he attended in Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Seattle boathouse on Sunday Jan. 24, 2010,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“It was the only question in more than four hours of testimony that Grandinetti declined to answer,” P.E.D. reports. “Jan. 24 was a significant date in several respects. Amazon executives knew that Apple (AAPL) had scheduled a major product announcement for the following Wednesday. They suspected it was going to be a tablet that could read e-books — a market they currently dominated.”
P.E.D. reports, “Although Grandinetti wouldn’t say anything about the meeting in Bezos’ boathouse — not even if Bezos attended it — documents presented into evidence showed that the next day, Jan. 25, Amazon began developing its own terms for an agency contract. Those terms, as it turned out, were remarkably similar to the ones Apple was negotiating with the publishers… Those terms are among the ones the government has characterized in Apple’s contracts as part of an illegal scheme to fix prices.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
U.S. v. Apple: If what Amazon did was lawful, why isn’t Apple’s behavior also lawful? – June 6, 2013
Apple says differences in publisher deals disprove U.S. DOJ’s e-book conspiracy allegation – June 5, 2013
U.S. v. Apple iBookstore case could go to the Supreme Court – June 5, 2013
Apple accuses DOJ of unfairly twisting Steve Jobs’ words in e-book case – June 4, 2013
U.S. DOJ prosecutors accuse Apple of driving up e-book prices – June 3, 2013
U.S. v. Apple goes to trial; DOJ claims e-book price-fixing conspiracy with Apple as ringmaster – June 3, 2013
U.S. DOJ takes Apple to trial alleging e-book price-fixing – June 2, 2013
In pretrial view, judge says leaning toward U.S. DOJ over Apple in e-books case – May 24, 2013