I should have read this complaint before, it's better than a John Grisham!
Quote:
53. The executive in charge of Apple's inchoate e-books business, Eddy Cue, telephoned each Publisher Defendant and Random House on or around December 8,2009 to schedule exploratory meetings in New York City on December 15 and December 16. Hachette and HarperCollins took the lead in working with Apple to capitalize on this golden opportunity for the Publisher Defendants to achieve their goal of raising and stabilizing retail e-book prices above $9.99 by collectively imposing the agency model on the industry.
54. It appears that Hachette and HarperCollins communicated with each other about moving to an agency model during the briefwindow between Mr. Cue's first telephone calls to the Publisher Defendants and his visit to meet with their CEOs. On the morning of December 10, 2009, a HarperCollins executive added to his calendar an appointment to call a Hachette
executive at 10:50 AM. At 11:01 AM, the Hachette executive returned the phone call, and the two spoke for six minutes. Then, less than a week later in New York, both Hachette and HarperCollins executives told Mr. Cue in their initial meetings with him that they wanted to sell e-books under an agency model, a dramatic departure from the way books had been sold for over a century.
55. The other Publisher Defendants also made clear to Apple that they "certainly" did not want to continue "the existing way that they were doing business," i.e., with Amazon promoting their most popular e-books for $9.99 under a wholesale model.
56. Apple saw a way to turn the agency scheme into a highly profitable model for itself. Apple determined to give the Publisher Defendants what they wanted while shielding itself from retail price competition and realizing margins far in excess of what e-book retailers then averaged on each newly released or bestselling e-book sold. Apple realized that, as a result of the scheme, "the customer" would "pay[] a little more."
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I think that pretty much nails the concept that the DOJ can get a bit more detailed information than your average investor. And probably nails Apple too.