eNews

Two interesting updates to stories from Thursday: Following the formalization of the ebook pricing settlement between the European Commission and four publishers and Apple announced yesterday, Penguin’s own statement about their negotiations was more forthcoming that the EC’s characterization. In fact, it was one of those rare moments when a company says out loud what everyone is already thinking. Rebecca Sinclair from Penguin’s London office reiterated “our position has been—and remains—that we have done nothing wrong” but added “as a practical matter, we are settling in the interests of clearing the decks before the new company is established.” The EC […]

As expected, the three US Settlers (Harper, Hachette and Simon & Schuster), along with Macmillan and Apple, have settled the EU investigation into ebook pricing as previously negotiated. The European Commission has formally “accepted the legally binding commitments” from the settling parties. Their announcement provides a lengthy way of saying that the EC has accepted the same basic settlement that was laboriously negotiated with the US Department of Justice (without ever actually mentioning the US case). Though Penguin has not settled with the EC, the new announcement says that position may change–not a big surprise, since settlements in both Europe […]