Penguin Random House filed their initial answer on Monday to the Department of Justice’s complaint seeking to block the publisher’s plan to acquire Simon & Schuster. The reply challenges the core of the DOJ’s case, which asserts that the acquisition is “likely to substantially lessen competition” for “the acquisition of US publishing rights to books from authors,” focusing in particular on what the government describes as the market for “anticipated top-selling books,” which “would be highly concentrated.” But is that an acceptable market definition? PRH argues that, “DOJ invents a market for rights to ‘anticipated top-selling books’ that excludes the […]
