“When Apple goes before a federal appeals court on Dec. 15, trying to overturn the ebooks price-fixing judgment the Justice Department won against it in July 2013, there will be an elephant in the room,” Roger Parloff reports for Fortune. “That would be Amazon, the much admired and greatly feared discounter, which is not a party in the case. Yet the unposed question hovering over the proceedings will be: Did the regulators target the right bully?”
“When the curtain rose on the iBooks Store on April 3, 2010, so did prices industrywide for most new-release ebooks, to the tune of about 17%,” Parloff reports. “That dramatic price rise—and a letter Amazon wrote to regulators two months earlier — led the Justice Department and 33 state attorneys general to sue Apple and five publishing houses for horizontal price-fixing in violation of the Sherman Act. In July 2013, after a three-week trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of Manhattan ruled against Apple.”
“This is the stain on its reputation that Apple hopes the appeals court will wash away. The man at the center of the dispute, Apple’s Cue, 50, has agreed, in a Fortune exclusive, to grant his first press interview on the subject,” Parloff reports. “‘We feel we have to fight for the truth,’ says Cue. ‘Luckily, Tim feels exactly like I do,’ he continues, referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook, ‘which is: You have to fight for your principles no matter what. Because it’s just not right.’ …’If I had it to do all over again, I’d do it again,’ he says. ‘I’d just take better notes.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the interest of justice and truth (both of which seem to be in woefully short supply lately), the appeals court should overrule U.S. Federal Puppet Denise Cote’s wrongheaded, baseless, evidence-free decision.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
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