“Apple Inc on Tuesday lost an attempt to dismiss lawsuits by state attorneys general accusing it of conspiring with five major publishers to fix e-book prices,” Nate Raymond reports for Reuters. “U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s ruling paves the way for attorneys general in 33 states and territories to move forward, along with attorneys for consumers, in pursuing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages at a July 14 trial.”
“Following a non-jury trial, Cote in July found that Apple from 2009 to 2010 conspired with the publishers to raise e-book prices and impede competitors such as Amazon.com Inc.,” Raymond reports. “The states had pursued the liability finding alongside the U.S. Justice Department without any objection by Apple and obtained a subsequent injunction against the iPad maker in September that called for the appointment of a compliance monitor. But as the case moved into a damages phase, Apple argued that the states lacked standing to maintain an action for damages, arguing they had not alleged they had suffered any injury.”
“Cote, though, said it was easy to conclude the states had standing to move forward with the case,” Raymond reports. “‘Apple has cited no authority to support the distinction it is advocating here between the standing to seek an end to an antitrust violation and the standing to seek damages for that violation,’ she wrote… The company has appealed the liability finding in the civil lawsuit and denies wrongdoing. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are seeking $840 million in damages.”
I hope she dies the most horrible death of every kind of cancer, in the most painful and humiliating way. I say that with love. There’s no fate horrible enough for her.
I think Apple is going to lose this one. The DOJ wants that money. The States wants that money. They have Cote, who already judged Apple Guilty before the trial began ( plenty of links and information on the web to verify this ) are loved by the DOJ and States. She is the puppet to get their grubby dirty hands on some of those hard earned Billions from Apple. At the same time Bozo is smiling like an evil clown that he is. Why? He get to control pricing and monopolize the market even more. Not just books, just about every thing will now be his to play with pricing and to sell. Soon the clueless masses will buy food at Amazon, because it soooooooo cheap!
Did they even SELL $849 million dollars worth of eBooks during this time? Maybe Apple should close down the iBook store so it will be glaringly obvious Amazon has a monopoly? According to the DOJ a monopoly is okay if the prices are low? Historically not for long.
ya know, if you want to bring bezos to heel- and this also applies to zuckerberg at facebook – you start a movement to organize people to stop using these “services”
amazon runs on such thin margins that a significant drop in their sales will be catastrophic in very short order.
same for facebook. once their usage drops significantly – along with their income, you will then see changes in their privacy policies.
until this happens, the only thing that facebook users are accomplishing is enabeling that organization to reap profits as they do the dirtywork for the nsa.
I’m sure Apple still has a few Hail Marys left in this fight. I find it hard to believe that one judge can be the end all be all in a justice system that can have cases drag on for a decade across a dozen different courts.
I think beyond that, Apple can simply start (or contribute) to a smear campaign to have her be judged unfit for public service.
There’s no money trail. That’s not how it works. There are “future considerations”, and it’s done with a handshake. How ironic that there is honour among thieves only at the highest levels.
It’s too easy to make fun of and insult Cote. But it accomplishes nothing. Impeaching the instigators of these vacuous prosecutions and verdicts: THAT I’d like to see.
If we impeached every criminal in #MyStupidGovernment, how many people do you think we’d have left running the show? Not many.
While Cote is a terrible judge (not just for Apple — she has a long history of pre-judging cases), it makes sense to see how the case does on the appeal. I have a feeling the Appeals Court will not reach quite the same conclusions as Cote did, though Apple may still be guilty of (lightly) overstepping some obscure boundaries.
Was not Amazon essentially price dumping books on the market? I don’t understand how a company who is trying to figure out a viable new. business model that allows for even a minuscule profit is guilty of some kind of sin against the market. When people band together to decide not to get run out of business by a business who has decided they can lose money forever and who for some reason wal street has decided can lose money forever , is that really criminal behavior? Or is the other behavior criminal. Taking loses to run your competition out of business so that you are the only business left. That seems more like monopolistic behavior.
It is not the DoJ. It is Obama, the very worst white President ever to hold office. He is very steadily implementing communism here in the US, attacking successful private companies and any opposition with the full power of the Federal Government. Obama hates America and his hatred can be seen in every action of the government.
I’d agree with you if his plan was to buy Amazon as well and make it a state-controlled monopoly.
Otherwise, I don’t buy it. I have never seen a US politician who was a communist.
Apparently you have not seen Obama. He most definitely is a communist. And one whose chosen ideology is Islam. A very nasty mix. But then, he is a very nasty man. With big ears.
We have a communist as President. He tells the Federal Judges he wants to punish Apple because they are a successful capitalist company. This is what communists do – destroy every successful thing they come across. This madness will continue as long as we have this lunatic as President. We are running out of good things in America as Obama and his thug goons have destroyed an awful lot and they are picking up speed. Maybe people will learn to check out the beliefs of those they vote for next time – after their life’s savings are wiped out.
Do you even know what a communist is? It isn’t just a bad name to call someone who you don’t like. The US has not survived McCarthyism and you can help it by naming the traits that you don’t like rather than the ubiquitous umbrella term of ‘communist’. Forced sharing is wrong but greed isn’t a better alternative.
Never mind communism. Kent senses injustice here, what matter the labeling? Obama speaks out occasionally about this or that injustice…he is silent about this particular instance of injustice, one to which we tech watchers are sensitive. With such an egregious failure of sensitivity to moral sentiment, how can anyone not succumb to cynicism?
Yes, I know exactly what a communist is and that is why I accurately called him one. If you were not so intellectually lazy, and if you had investigated this fraud before voting for him you would know what he was. He was brought up by communist parents, sought out communist teachers at school, was promoted by communists like Bill Ayers as he started in Chicago. And in America today, the fashionable left loves communists like Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra. If you were not so ignorant you would know that a candidate who vows to spread the wealth around and then socializes the entire health system while promoting every key plank of the Communist Manifesto, is a communist. But, you are stupid and that can’t be fixed.
Interesting how right wing leaning people resort to calling people names when they debate a topic. I suggest that is a weak position to move towards. I don’t vote in US elections because I don’t live there. As an outsider, I think I can be objective and evaluate what I observe. Social responsibility is not the same as socialism and nowhere near communism. Even right wingers see the benefit in helping out their fellow man in a disaster. Health issues can become a nation wide disaster if we allow the poor to get diseased and make them take care of themselves without our help.
Now Left Wing people like you never call people names, except maybe “racist” or “denier”. Those names are favorites when there is no argument that can be made. On the other hand when I call Obama a communist it is because he is. He likes communism. Leftists like communists. This is well known and not controversial. You should know a few things before you make uninformed comments.
I am neither left or right.
I don’t understand how you people can say these things with a straight face. At launch of the iBooks store it was painfully obvious that Apple was guilty of colluding with the publishers to price fix the books! They got caught, deal with it!
Apple wanted to enter the market and make money selling ebooks. So they set up their sales to turn a profit. Publishers then use that to force amazon to accept the agency model. So, by cotes own admission, all apple had to do was enter the market and provide leverage to the publishers. This is how she gets around the lack of evidence of collusion.
Our Christian virtue battles with our independent spirit and our political loyalty. Fighting an internal war on two fronts, the better angel of our natures stands little chance.
Strikes me that the only people making a fortune out of this debacle and other cases are the Apple legal team and their seemingly inability to win anything. Why not try the South African Prosecutor in the current murder case there, he sounds as if he’ll get things sorted??
Obama hopes to make a lot of money when Tim Cook realizes he needs to make lots of big cash donations to the Democrat machine in order to have better luck with judicial outcomes. Amazing how cash can change your fortunes in a banana republic, or Chicago or Moscow.
Apple’s legal team expects the judge to follow the law, not to make it up as she goes along. Judge Cote has ignored established law and precedent in this case, appointed a legal monitor in a case that has no indication one is needed or is justified, gave the monitor powers far beyond her own to investigate (something the judicial branch DOES NOT POSSESS) other aspects of Apple’s business, and prejudged the case and even wrote much of her decision before even hearing the defense’s case. . . basing her judgement solely on the case presented pre-trial on the pleadings presented by the prosecution, a predilection this judge is infamous for in the circuit. The monitor she appointed was not even qualified for the position being uneducated in anti-trust law, price fixing, or even business and had to hire ANOTHER lawyer to concurrently school him on his own job. . . to say nothing of the fact that the monitor apparently is LIVING with the judge which raises at least the appearance of impermissible ex parté conversations—perhaps in bed?—if not the fact between the monitor and the judge, which may explain why the judge at first explicitly PERMITTED ex parté communications between herself and the monitor in her original order establishing the monitorship! Sounds a little too cozy to me… and what’s to stop them from having those conversations now that they’ve agreed they won’t happen without the presence of Apple’s legal counsel? Or are they now going to have a ménage à trois every night with the Apple lawyer? Frankly, the whole thing stinks.
I hate this bitch.
I hope she dies the most horrible death of every kind of cancer, in the most painful and humiliating way. I say that with love. There’s no fate horrible enough for her.
Fsck Bezos and Amazon.
Careful, he owns the Washington Post and can smear you into the next century with a few pointed articles :p
Bezos is also a regular at Bilderberg.
I think Apple is going to lose this one. The DOJ wants that money. The States wants that money. They have Cote, who already judged Apple Guilty before the trial began ( plenty of links and information on the web to verify this ) are loved by the DOJ and States. She is the puppet to get their grubby dirty hands on some of those hard earned Billions from Apple. At the same time Bozo is smiling like an evil clown that he is. Why? He get to control pricing and monopolize the market even more. Not just books, just about every thing will now be his to play with pricing and to sell. Soon the clueless masses will buy food at Amazon, because it soooooooo cheap!
Did they even SELL $849 million dollars worth of eBooks during this time? Maybe Apple should close down the iBook store so it will be glaringly obvious Amazon has a monopoly? According to the DOJ a monopoly is okay if the prices are low? Historically not for long.
And the NSA wants access to Apple servers.
Possibly, I have no faith in our government any more.
ya know, if you want to bring bezos to heel- and this also applies to zuckerberg at facebook – you start a movement to organize people to stop using these “services”
amazon runs on such thin margins that a significant drop in their sales will be catastrophic in very short order.
same for facebook. once their usage drops significantly – along with their income, you will then see changes in their privacy policies.
until this happens, the only thing that facebook users are accomplishing is enabeling that organization to reap profits as they do the dirtywork for the nsa.
Moron Cote..
I have no doubt she has some under the table payola from … ( follow the money and it leads to ) Jeff Bozo
I’m sure Apple still has a few Hail Marys left in this fight. I find it hard to believe that one judge can be the end all be all in a justice system that can have cases drag on for a decade across a dozen different courts.
I think beyond that, Apple can simply start (or contribute) to a smear campaign to have her be judged unfit for public service.
Isn’t that always the case though? Believe it.
There’s no money trail. That’s not how it works. There are “future considerations”, and it’s done with a handshake. How ironic that there is honour among thieves only at the highest levels.
It’s too easy to make fun of and insult Cote. But it accomplishes nothing. Impeaching the instigators of these vacuous prosecutions and verdicts: THAT I’d like to see.
If we impeached every criminal in #MyStupidGovernment, how many people do you think we’d have left running the show? Not many.
While Cote is a terrible judge (not just for Apple — she has a long history of pre-judging cases), it makes sense to see how the case does on the appeal. I have a feeling the Appeals Court will not reach quite the same conclusions as Cote did, though Apple may still be guilty of (lightly) overstepping some obscure boundaries.
Was not Amazon essentially price dumping books on the market? I don’t understand how a company who is trying to figure out a viable new. business model that allows for even a minuscule profit is guilty of some kind of sin against the market. When people band together to decide not to get run out of business by a business who has decided they can lose money forever and who for some reason wal street has decided can lose money forever , is that really criminal behavior? Or is the other behavior criminal. Taking loses to run your competition out of business so that you are the only business left. That seems more like monopolistic behavior.
The DOJ does not care about the truth. They should be renamed the Department of Injustice (Friends of Amazon).
It is not the DoJ. It is Obama, the very worst white President ever to hold office. He is very steadily implementing communism here in the US, attacking successful private companies and any opposition with the full power of the Federal Government. Obama hates America and his hatred can be seen in every action of the government.
I’d agree with you if his plan was to buy Amazon as well and make it a state-controlled monopoly.
Otherwise, I don’t buy it. I have never seen a US politician who was a communist.
Apparently you have not seen Obama. He most definitely is a communist. And one whose chosen ideology is Islam. A very nasty mix. But then, he is a very nasty man. With big ears.
We have a communist as President. He tells the Federal Judges he wants to punish Apple because they are a successful capitalist company. This is what communists do – destroy every successful thing they come across. This madness will continue as long as we have this lunatic as President. We are running out of good things in America as Obama and his thug goons have destroyed an awful lot and they are picking up speed. Maybe people will learn to check out the beliefs of those they vote for next time – after their life’s savings are wiped out.
Do you even know what a communist is? It isn’t just a bad name to call someone who you don’t like. The US has not survived McCarthyism and you can help it by naming the traits that you don’t like rather than the ubiquitous umbrella term of ‘communist’. Forced sharing is wrong but greed isn’t a better alternative.
Never mind communism. Kent senses injustice here, what matter the labeling? Obama speaks out occasionally about this or that injustice…he is silent about this particular instance of injustice, one to which we tech watchers are sensitive. With such an egregious failure of sensitivity to moral sentiment, how can anyone not succumb to cynicism?
Yes, I know exactly what a communist is and that is why I accurately called him one. If you were not so intellectually lazy, and if you had investigated this fraud before voting for him you would know what he was. He was brought up by communist parents, sought out communist teachers at school, was promoted by communists like Bill Ayers as he started in Chicago. And in America today, the fashionable left loves communists like Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra. If you were not so ignorant you would know that a candidate who vows to spread the wealth around and then socializes the entire health system while promoting every key plank of the Communist Manifesto, is a communist. But, you are stupid and that can’t be fixed.
Interesting how right wing leaning people resort to calling people names when they debate a topic. I suggest that is a weak position to move towards. I don’t vote in US elections because I don’t live there. As an outsider, I think I can be objective and evaluate what I observe. Social responsibility is not the same as socialism and nowhere near communism. Even right wingers see the benefit in helping out their fellow man in a disaster. Health issues can become a nation wide disaster if we allow the poor to get diseased and make them take care of themselves without our help.
Now Left Wing people like you never call people names, except maybe “racist” or “denier”. Those names are favorites when there is no argument that can be made. On the other hand when I call Obama a communist it is because he is. He likes communism. Leftists like communists. This is well known and not controversial. You should know a few things before you make uninformed comments.
I am neither left or right.
I don’t understand how you people can say these things with a straight face. At launch of the iBooks store it was painfully obvious that Apple was guilty of colluding with the publishers to price fix the books! They got caught, deal with it!
There is no evidence of collision. Cote herself said all apple had to do was facilitate the publishers conspiracy.
Collusion, I mean.
Apple wanted to enter the market and make money selling ebooks. So they set up their sales to turn a profit. Publishers then use that to force amazon to accept the agency model. So, by cotes own admission, all apple had to do was enter the market and provide leverage to the publishers. This is how she gets around the lack of evidence of collusion.
We must not be so mean hatred. Where is our Christian Virtue. I hope that Satan is kind to her. Kindness always.
Our Christian virtue battles with our independent spirit and our political loyalty. Fighting an internal war on two fronts, the better angel of our natures stands little chance.
Strikes me that the only people making a fortune out of this debacle and other cases are the Apple legal team and their seemingly inability to win anything. Why not try the South African Prosecutor in the current murder case there, he sounds as if he’ll get things sorted??
Obama hopes to make a lot of money when Tim Cook realizes he needs to make lots of big cash donations to the Democrat machine in order to have better luck with judicial outcomes. Amazing how cash can change your fortunes in a banana republic, or Chicago or Moscow.
Apple’s legal team expects the judge to follow the law, not to make it up as she goes along. Judge Cote has ignored established law and precedent in this case, appointed a legal monitor in a case that has no indication one is needed or is justified, gave the monitor powers far beyond her own to investigate (something the judicial branch DOES NOT POSSESS) other aspects of Apple’s business, and prejudged the case and even wrote much of her decision before even hearing the defense’s case. . . basing her judgement solely on the case presented pre-trial on the pleadings presented by the prosecution, a predilection this judge is infamous for in the circuit. The monitor she appointed was not even qualified for the position being uneducated in anti-trust law, price fixing, or even business and had to hire ANOTHER lawyer to concurrently school him on his own job. . . to say nothing of the fact that the monitor apparently is LIVING with the judge which raises at least the appearance of impermissible ex parté conversations—perhaps in bed?—if not the fact between the monitor and the judge, which may explain why the judge at first explicitly PERMITTED ex parté communications between herself and the monitor in her original order establishing the monitorship! Sounds a little too cozy to me… and what’s to stop them from having those conversations now that they’ve agreed they won’t happen without the presence of Apple’s legal counsel? Or are they now going to have a ménage à trois every night with the Apple lawyer? Frankly, the whole thing stinks.