As the European Union wrestles with its very financial foundations, their antitrust agency the European Commission is focusing on the essential issue: It will formally investigate whether the original Agency Five and Apple “have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition in the European Union or in the European Economic Area.” The Commission says it is “examining the character and terms of the agency agreements entered into…for the sale of e-books. The Commission has concerns that these practices may breach EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices.” […]
Agency
Accounting House of Horrors? What Agency Does to Amazon’s Reports
Ever since the agency model first appeared in early 2010 we’ve been writing about some of the unanticipated effects of that shift, and today we turn our attention to another previously overlooked ramification: what agency does to retailer accounting. In public Amazon opposed the agency model on behalf of protecting their power to price ebooks and offer discounts to their customers. But agency has an important accounting impact as well. For regular/wholesale ebook sales, Amazon books the full value of what the consumer pays. But for agency ebooks, under standard accounting rules the company only books the commission they receive […]
Still More Law Firms Want A Piece of Class-Action Agency Suits, As Pretrial Conferences Loom
There have been some new developments since we reported in August on the growing number of class action-seeking lawsuits launched against Apple and the six largest trade publishing houses on the grounds that the agency model violates antitrust laws. Between August 12 and September 23, at least a dozen additional suits were filed in California’s Northern District and New York’s Southern District, each alleging “conspiracy” and “collusion” to fix ebook prices against Apple and the publishers. Of greater importance now than the volume of suits is process by which the California and New York cases are slowly towards consolidation. In […]
Class Action Lawsuits Against Apple and Agency Publishers Proliferate
When the Seattle law firm Hagens Berman filed suit against Apple and publishers Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster last week, they specifically sought media coverage–and got it. Without press releases, what was missed was that four additional suits, all seeking to be part of a larger class action, were filed in federal courts in New York and California between August 10 and August 12. Across the various suits, Random House, Amazon and Barnes & Noble all get added to the legal feasting as well. As you may surmise, each of these suits works off the same logic […]
Attorney Discusses Agency Lawsuit
In an interview on Wednesday, managing partner at law firm Hagens Berman Steve Berman confirmed a number of the inferences in our initial report on their lawsuit against Apple and the Agency Five publishers. Berman admits that for now they have no actual evidence of collusion and no information beyond what is already well-known publicly and outlined in their complaint. But he believes that provides a sufficiently “plausible allegation…that there was a conspiracy” to get a judge’s approval to go forward with the case and compel discovery. (Berman also has no direct knowledge of the civil investigations into the same […]
Class-Action Law Firm Files Suit Against Publishers and Apple Over Agency Model
Class-action law specialists Hagens Berman filed suit in a San Francisco Federal Court against Apple, along with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, over the agency model of ebook pricing. On behalf of two people who bought ebooks, the firm alleges that Apple and the publishers are “in violation of a variety of federal and state antitrust laws, the Sherman Act, the Cartwright Act and the Unfair Competition Act.” Aside from explaining the agency model in florid terms, the essence of the complaint appears for now to rest on twists of logic and reasoning–or tautologies–rather than […]