Posted on 03/07/2016 8:00:43 AM PST by Swordmaker
“The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Apple Inc. and left in place a ruling that the company conspired with publishers to raise electronic book prices when it sought to challenge Amazon.com’s dominance of the market,” The Associated Press reports.
“The justices’ order on Monday lets stand an appeals court ruling that found Cupertino, California-based Apple violated antitrust laws in 2010,” AP reports. “The 2-1 ruling by the New York-based appeals court sustained a trial judge’s finding that Apple orchestrated an illegal conspiracy to raise prices. A dissenting judge called Apple’s actions legal, ‘gloves-off competition.'”
“Apple Inc. must pay $450 million to end an antitrust suit after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a finding that the company orchestrated a scheme to raise the prices for electronic books,” Greg Stohr reports for Bloomberg. “The accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to e-book consumers, $20 million to the states, and $30 million in legal fees.”
“At the Supreme Court, Apple argued that its actions enhanced competition by providing consumers with a new e-book platform. The company said overall e-book prices have fallen in the years since the introduction of iBookstore [sic],” Stohr reports. “‘Following Apple’s entry, output increased, overall prices decreased, and a major new retailer began to compete in a market formerly dominated by a single firm,’ the company said in its appeal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Travesty. Justice was not served in this case.
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“A federal judge in Manhattan found that Apple persuaded five of the biggest publishers to shift to a system under which they, and not the retailers, would set book prices.”
The court seems to be in a flurry of activity ever since Scalia passed.
Apple offered them an Agency Model sales program, exactly the same as the App stores, the Music store, and the movie and video stores that have and are perfectly LEGAL. In fact, the New York judge even ruled that there was nothing illegal about every single portion of the acts that Apple did. . . but all those LEGAL things, somehow, in her opinion, made up an illegal act! It was an entirely NOVEL creation of the Justice Department and that judge. She announced BEFORE the trial and before hearing any evidence that she had made her judgement! What is surprising here is that the US Supreme Court, with Justice Scalia writing for the Majority, had outlined guidance which REQUIRED that only horizontal participants could be indicted for such conspiracies. Apple, not being a publisher, was a retailer and hence only a purchaser from the publishers, by definition could NOT BE PART of a horizontal conspiracy by LAW. That was the conclusion of the dissenting Appellate Court Justice who USED THE US SUPREME COURT'S OWN GUIDELINES on such cases. The other justices did not even use the most modern cases, and in fact used cases that had BEEN REVERSED by the US SUPREME COURT in the case in which they set down the guidelines on how to evaluate these cases.
The two associate justices went back to case law that was INVALID to make their ruling upholding Judge Cote's ruling! The dissenting Justice was shocked and read them the riot act on their misbehavior and misapplication of the LAW. He was absolutely certain that the US Supreme Court would reverse based on their own very clear guidance, and so were most legal scholars who commented on the case! That is why the Court not granting Apple's appeal is shocking!
This is what happens when the LIBERALS dominate the Court. We can no longer rely on the Rule of LAW, we are now dependent on the WHIMS of Men. . . and there are enough LIBERALS in the appellate system to back up those liberal judges who think that doing the most GOOD for consumers is what is most important, not upholding the edifice of established LAW. In the two commentaries written by those two Associate Justices of the Appellate Court, they did not TALK at all about what the law said. . . they talked about what was good for the consumers and how wonderful it was that the consumers got lower pricing under Amazon's pricing scheme on best sellers, which was disrupted by Apple's entrance into the market! Bad, bad, publishers, and Bad, Bad Apple. Judge Cote, upheld!
Let’s see.
Apple conspired with publishers to raise prices of eBooks while at the same time getting agreements from the manufacturers to charge Apple less for the books than they charged Amazon and others.
If you go back to actual words of the law, it says “Every person” and “Every contract”. That means anyone.
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That's false. There was no charging Apple less than others in the agreement with the publishers. Only that Apple had the right to sell to it's customers at the same retail price anyone else was selling at so that Apple customers would not be at a disadvantage. Quit making up stuff.
“That’s false. There was no charging Apple less than others in the agreement with the publishers. Only that Apple had the right to sell to it’s customers at the same retail price anyone else was selling at so that Apple customers would not be at a disadvantage. Quit making up stuff. “
It was stated in court filings that ublishers were making less when Apple was selling at $14.99 than when Amazon was selling at $9.99.
I don’t understand how you say Apple customers would not be at a disadvantage when Apple would charge them $14.99 versus the previous Amazon price of $9.99.
“I don’t understand how you say Apple customers would not be at a disadvantage when Apple would charge them $14.99 versus the previous Amazon price of $9.99.”
One way is the Kindle app which works on iPhone and iPads. I would buy some books through it, but iBooks is better so I went ahead and switched back and paid the (then) $1 difference.
Now they all are pretty close in price.
“Only that Apple had the right to sell to it’s customers at the same retail price anyone else was selling at so that Apple customers would not be at a disadvantage. “
hmmmm..
Amazon was committed to lowering the price to the consumer, Apple was committed to fixing a higher price for their customers.
Previously, the wholesale cost of an ebook was lower than the cost of a hardback. Amazon negotiated this as the cost to produce an ebook was less than the price for producing a hardback. Apple conspired to get that discount removed.
For some reason some people think that was to benefit Apple customers.
One of the strategies that they employed was the elimination of the existing discount on wholesale prices of e-books. This meant that the wholesale price for e-books would equal the wholesale price for physical books, and as a result, the wholesale price that Amazon paid for an e-book would be set at several dollars above Amazon’s $9.99 price point.
It sounds like you’ll get a free Ebook, and the lawyers will split 30 million.
Ain’t justice grand?
” There was no charging Apple less than others in the agreement with the publishers. “
LOL! Obviously you have not read the agreements nor the court decisions which give explicit examples of same.
“HarperCollins’ Murray immediately recognized that “[t]he combination of Apple’s proposed pricing tiers and the 30% commission meant that HarperCollins would make less money per book than it was then making on a wholesale model.””
“HarperCollins’ Murray immediately recognized that “[t]he combination of Apple’s proposed pricing tiers and the 30% commission meant that HarperCollins would make less money per book than it was then making on a wholesale model.”
Go to page 95 to see a chart how Apple manange to ‘help’ their consumers. Notice how the plot does not go up for Random House, the only publisher not party to the conspiracy.
http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=306
Last time I think I got a $24 credit. I’ll take another.
Look idiot, I've been following this case far longer than you, plus I am an Economist. I know what I am talking about. The publishers were losing money overall because of the predatory pricing being done by Amazon. It was heavily impacting the hard copy books and their own ability to sell to other markets. I've read ever case file on this. The publishers are healthier today and there is more competition than there ever was before. They are all selling eBooks on the Agency model now. . . It's too bad the court system is politicized with Liberal idiots who change the laws at a whim.
The vast majority of eBooks are now selling at lower costs than ever before because of more competition. . . And that is the truth. Amazon is a bad actor in retail at all levels, undercutting prices in every market and frequently selling at a loss. No one can compete with a company that isn't interested in profits.
Amazon is interested in monopolizing the market. You cannot make a profit by selling something you buy for $16 for $10! Nor can you justify selling content as a loss leader to attract buyers to a another product you're selling at cost or less to get people to buy content you're selling below cost! It is economic insanity.
The DOJ claims they've looked at Amazon and investigated their predatory anticompetitive pricing under the antitrust act, but no one can find any record of any such investigation. It pays to make huge donations to Obama, the Democrats, and own the Washington Post!
LOL! Did you read the Apple emails? I think not.
Did you read the court decision I linked? I think not.
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