The first version of a tortured lawsuit against the five largest trade publishers and Amazon, alleging that the publishers conspired to have Amazon extract tough terms from them, failed quickly and was withdrawn and “amended.” It rested primarily on allegations of abusive most favored nations clauses. So Amazon produced redacted contracts to demonstrate that the “MFN conspiracy theory was utterly baseless. Separate and apart from its mischaracterization of the purpose and effect of MFN provisions, the simple fact is that none of Amazon’s and the Publisher Defendants’ wholesale purchase agreements for print books contains any of the price or non-price […]
