[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Let's see now, earlier you said that only 7 judges vote on Cert and that the Apple had the chance to appeal on the facts and since the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, that validates her findings, now you admit that neither is true.

As far as the case being unremarkable, I would suggest that perhaps you don't understand the history of US anti-trust and thus don't understand why the case is remarkable. It undercuts a previous Supreme Court ruling (Leegin Creative Leather Prods. V. PSKS, Inc, 2007), which was based on Robert Bork's theory of the purpose of anti-trust. There is quite a bit of disagreement and controversy over per se illegality and the rule of reason. Two of the appellate judges upheld her finding, while the other rather strongly disagreed with it, which tends to argue that it wasn't nearly as straight forward as you declare.

This is what I said:

Also, if the judges were, as you say, "in a 4-4 ideological dead lock", cert would have been granted by 4 of your hypothetical pro-Apple justices. It only takes 4 justices to have the Court grant Cert and hear the case. Though a 4-4 deadlock would be interesting, since there are only 7 justices on the panel deciding Cert Applications.

My last sentence was incorrect. I made the mistake of assuming because only 4 justices were required to grant cert and there are 7 justices on the cert panel the requirement was for a majority of the Cert panel. I was mistaken on this, since it seems that to grant cert only 4 votes out of 9 justices are required. My misunderstanding is not material. If there was a 4-4 deadlock as you say Apple would have had its Cert.

Apple did appeal and the findings of fact were reviewed for clear error. Apparently none was found.

That you do not agree with the application of the rule of reason counts for nought. It does not mean the case is remarkable, certainly not in the sense that the Supreme Court should hear it. After all, that Court chose not to grant Cert. A more informed view was expressed by PG of the Passive Voice at the end of this 2017 Passive Voice post headed IBooks Author Conference

From an antitrust legal perspective, the verdict of the trial court was pretty much a foregone conclusion. None of the participants were in the least bit intelligent in their actions.

A lawyer friend of mine used to much prefer minority opinions to majority ones. It made for some interesting discussions but advanced neither his career nor the law.