Antitrust fallout: retailers sue conspirators

[ApK]

Hmm...this is tough one.

Here's a quote on the case from judge Cote, the judge who reviewed all the court evidence:

"In this straightforward price-fixing case, no further showing is required."

But anonymous Internet forum poster pwalker8 says this is not a price fixing case.

Who's opinion to trust? Hmm, tough one...

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ApK

Hmm...this is tough one.

Here's a quote on the case from judge Cote, the judge who reviewed all the court evidence:

"In this straightforward price-fixing case, no further showing is required."

But anonymous Internet forum poster pwalker8 says this is not a price fixing case.

Who's opinion to trust? Hmm, tough one...

I really don't understand how anyone can come down on the side of collusion. The fact that the publishers "never admitted guilt" but agreed to "not to do it again" -- is beside the point. Jobs was publicly bragging about the fact that prices would be coming up -- before it happened. No amount of denial can ignore that fact.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I really don't understand how anyone can come down on the side of collusion. The fact that the publishers "never admitted guilt" but agreed to "not to do it again" -- is beside the point. Jobs was publicly bragging about the fact that prices would be coming up -- before it happened. No amount of denial can ignore that fact.

They *all* launched at the exact same prices St Jobs demanded. Classic horizontal price fixing.

The internal emails about the price points are part of the public record.
As are the ones about forcing Random House to support ibooks or be blocked from the appstore and the ones about using indigo/kobo as coordinator in Canada.

Those aren't blog posts, they are validated court evidence.

[Barcey]

Yes but but anonymous internet posters have said that Judge Cote actually reads the pretrial evidence and opinions before she goes to court and draws conclusions on the presented facts prior to going to the trial phase. She then apparently has the audacity to disregard trial testimony (and clever lawyer spin) that doesn't align with the pretrial evidence. According to internet lore this suspicious preparation is known as 'bias'.

[JSWolf]

The price fixing did cause harm to some of the eBook sellers. Plain and simple. So they should sue and they should win.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The price fixing did cause harm to some of the eBook sellers. Plain and simple. So they should sue and they should win.

...if their lawyers present a good case.
Not a guarantee even in a case as apparently clear as this.
They need to be very precise in tying the proven antitrust violation to the damages suffered.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...if their lawyers present a good case.
Not a guarantee even in a case as apparently clear as this.
They need to be very precise in tying the proven antitrust violation to the damages suffered.

Exactly. Even Judge Cote said it would be extremely difficult to quantity harm. How does one calculate "lost sales" that doesn't make it seem you are guessing? The judge is too smart to be fooled by fancy arithmetic. The record and movie studios have been trying for years and have failed every single time.

Then you have to add in other factors like Amazon's excellent ecosystem with the Kindle Keyboard, newly released iPad and indie insurgence.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't understand how agency pricing could keep books out of a store. Can you elaborate, please?

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

BooksOnBoard lost all agency titles because all contracts had to be renegotiated with the switch to agency (Took a good 3 months for BOB to get them back on the site).

BOB and fictionwise at least would have had to make a fair bit of changes to their websites as well as none of their discounts or loyalty rewards were allowed on agency titles.

Yes, everything had to be renegotiated and it took months for stores to get the titles back. Some never got them all back. At the time the head of BoB talked about it quite a bit, but I don't recall all the details.

Here's something from when BoB closed...

Livolsi has been critical of how the switch to the agency pricing model was implemented from the beginning and voiced complaints that it was organized strictly to benefit the big retail players and “devastated,” independent e-book sellers. He pointed to the lingering impact of the switch to agency pricing in 2010, a switch he said severely impacted indie e-book retailers because it removed Big Six titles—the switch was sudden and included major changes in metadata and delivery that severely affected e-book distributors—from his inventory. Indeed LiVolsi said he lost access to thousands of titles, some for more than a year, because of the Agency Model switch, and in the process he said, “we lost 70% of our customers.”

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...ook-sales.html



I don't think the rewards stuff was a hold up as both had always had some titles not eligible for rebates/rewards. All they had to do was agree to no rewards on those titles. The sites did have to do some work to facilitate collecting sales tax for states outside their home locations though (there are thousands when adding in not just state, but county & municipality for some areas).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Yes but but anonymous internet posters have said that Judge Cote actually reads the pretrial evidence and opinions before she goes to court and draws conclusions on the presented facts prior to going to the trial phase. She then apparently has the audacity to disregard trial testimony (and clever lawyer spin) that doesn't align with the pretrial evidence. According to internet lore this suspicious preparation is known as 'bias'.

I think the issue is that some lawyers who have appeared before Judge Cote say that she tends to making up her mind before all the arguments and evidence is presented and ignoring or waving aside anything that doesn't agree with that conclusion.

[DiapDealer]

Why do you believe those lawyers?

[eschwartz]

Those lawyers have made up their mind before all Judge Cote's reasoning is presented and ignore or wave aside anything that doesn't agree with that conclusion.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Why do you believe those lawyers?

Because they actually had experience dealing with Judge Cote? Because Judge Cote wrote a majority of her opinion the the Apple case before the trial actually started? Because Judge Cote's comments in the case indicated that she was dismissing or ignoring evidence that didn't agree with what she went into the case believing? Because, there are a lot of judges like that in the legal system? There are a lot of reasons that I find the lawyers comments believable. As I said, we will see how the appeals turn out.

[pwalker8]

Hum, looks like Apple is settling on the class action lawsuit. It will be interesting to see the amount. The plaintiffs were asking for $840 M. My guess is that the amount will be in the low enough to "pay just to make it go away" which is standard in these type of class action suits. The lawyers will get rich and that's pretty much the purpose of the suits.

[tubemonkey]

Stupid Apple! Why don't they continue fighting? After all, they did nothing wrong

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Hum, looks like Apple is settling on the class action lawsuit. It will be interesting to see the amount. The plaintiffs were asking for $840 M. My guess is that the amount will be in the low enough to "pay just to make it go away" which is standard in these type of class action suits. The lawyers will get rich and that's pretty much the purpose of the suits.

Reference, please?
Even the full $840M is noise to Apple: it's about half a percent of their mighty cash stash.

And, BTW, if it's the consumer class action suit, it won't be just the lawyers that see money; that one has 30 state AGs looking for political advantage so they will make sure there is some consumer-level payout and not just ibooks coupons.

The retailer suits, now combined, are a different story.
That one can be settled for the low 7-8 figure confidential payouts more typical of court-mail cases.