[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Graham

Here's one which I found pretty quickly searching on Google:

http://fortune.com/2013/05/24/u-s-ju...ikely-to-lose/

I disagree with pwalker's conclusions on this, but Judge Cote definitely prepared much of her final statement in advance. The dispute is whether this was justified.

Bear in mind that both Apple and the DOJ asked her to do this pre-trial work.

Graham

I can't see the content in that link. I did a google search and it turned up a page that I can see: https://fortunebrainstormtech.wordpr...titrust-judge/
Can you confirm that it is the same article?

If it is, the article just states that:

Asked during a preliminary hearing Thursday to share her thoughts about the Department of Justice's case against Apple (AAPL) in the long-awaited e-book antitrust trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said this, according to Reuters:

"I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that."

Here's the thing: The trial doesn't begin until June 3. Also, there's no jury, so Judge Cote's decision is final, and she says she's already begun writing a draft of it.

In her defense -- a strange phrase to use about a judge -- she's had a chance to read some of the evidence. Much of it is contained in e-mails and correspondence exchanged over a six-week period before the launch of the iPad, when Apple and five book publishers worked on alternatives to Amazon's (AMZN) below-cost pricing model of $9.99 for bestsellers.

This doesn't mean that much of her final statement was prepared in advance.

But it does mean that she was doing her homework, the result of which on one occasion benefited Apple (source: https://fortunebrainstormtech.wordpr...-judge-cote/):

On Thursday, Laura Porco, one of the Amazon executives who negotiated deals with book publishers, submitted a written statement that strongly suggested the former. In it she testified that the week before Steve Jobs announced the iBookstore, five of the six major publishers told her that "they were requiring Amazon to switch its terms ... because that's what Apple required them to do."

That looked pretty damaging to Apple.

But before Porco was allowed to leave the witness stand, Judge Cote, who alone will decide the non-jury case, had a few questions.

She zeroed in on the next sentence in Porco's written testimony:

"[The publishers] said their agreement with Apple included restrictions around consumer pricing that made it technically impossible to remain on reseller terms with Amazon or any other retailer."

Could those "restrictions" be what the publishers were referring to when they said Apple "required" them to change their terms? Judge Cote asked Porco. In other words, were the publishers' longstanding deals with Amazon off because of the structure of their agreement with Apple, not direct instructions from Apple?

The lawyers at Apple's table snapped to attention.

It was the first time in four days of trial that the judge -- who in pre-trial statements seemed to have already decided the case against their client -- asked a clarifying question that not only favored Apple, but seemed to get to the heart of its defense.