On December 23, well ahead of the deadline, the Department of Justice filed its 33-page brief in opposition to Apple’s petition asking the Supreme Court the hear an appeal of their ebook antitrust case. The focus of the government’s rebuttal is to argue that finding Apple guilty on a per se basis, rather than applying the rule of reason, was applied correctly under antitrust law because Apple was found to have participated in a horizontal conspiracy with the publishers. They say Apple’s argument to use the rule of reason incorrectly posits that their publisher agreements were “vertical” contracts, contrary to the prior […]