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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Quite a few misconceptions in there, but just to address the last two issue
e) it is quite common for companies to settle a case with the government without admitting guilt. The issue is a risk/reward question. If a publisher had actually gone to trial and lost, then they would have risked bankruptcy. It's much better to agree to a settlement without admitting guilt whither or not you are guilty. This particular tactic by prosecutors has become quite popular. The prosecutor gets a big headline, which helps their political career without actually having to prove anything. It's quite rare to run into a company that is willing risk going to trial in this situation. Frankly this is my major concern in this case, a prosecutor run wild. The biggest reason I'm rooting for Apple in this case is they have pockets deep enough and appear to care enough about their reputation to take this case as far as necessary. Many other companies don't have that luxury.
f) some people keep asserting this, however Judge Cote has frequently been overturned on appeal, even through she normally writes her decisions like this, the most recent being this past fall. Writing detailed judgments can be a two edged sword if the judgment is not legally sound. Apple has a number of legal rationals for appeal. Most of what I've read say that even if the 2nd doesn't overturn Cote, Apple is likely to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. Judge Cote's decision is a fairly radical departure to previous case law.
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I understand that companies often settle out of court because they calculate the risks of losing are more expensive than the settlement, and I believe that at least Macmillan still maintains innocence and settled just to limit their lawsuit costs. I'm personally rooting for Apple to lose (even though I'm in an investment club that owns Apple stock) because I personally saw the price of ebooks that I was interested in buying more than doubled because I could no longer cherry pick the sales and get them at a price I was willing to pay. Even if there was no collusion, the end result was certainly like it from what I could see.
However, as the judge presiding over the publisher settlements, and someone who had already read the emails entered into evidence for this trial, I think anyone trying to read that she was biased based on the comment at the pretrial hearing and that she will be overturned because of it is probably reading more into it than it deserves. I also think the claim that she is frequently overturned without quantifying sounds like an ad hominem attack. How frequently? 1 out of 100, 1 out of 10, once a year? How does that compare to other high profile Federal judges?
I am not a lawyer, so I can't speak to the legal merits of the decision. Are you, or are you just regurgitating the Apple fanboi articles by the same people who were sure before the trial that Apple was going to win? For what it's worth, here is
an article claiming that several legal scholars think that Apple's chances of winning the appeals are poor.
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“Apple may have a tough time getting this ruling reversed because the judge made findings of fact about the antitrust violation that appellate courts typically defer to,” Samuelson told AllThingsD. “Most reversals happen as to interpretations of the law.”
Samuelson’s point: Apple argued that the facts show no conspiracy in restraint of trade. But Cote found that the company’s actions were a per se violation of antitrust law. In other words, they were inherently illegal, so there was no need to prove that they had any anticompetitive effect on the e-books market. And Cote’s opinion relies so heavily on facts that it leaves very little room for an appellate court reversal.
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