DOJ

Even Macmillan ceo John Sargent wears a suit and tie to court, we discovered on Monday as the Federal government’s trial against Apple resumed. We also learned that Rupert Murdoch called HarperCollins ceo Brian Murray to complain about Amazon’s press release announcing their 70% royalty for KDP authors – “Rupert [who] is still pissed at Amazon…. He wants to screw Amazon,” Murray wrote – and Barnes & Noble “first brought to our attention…the term agency model,” according to Murray. (Sargent’s written interpretation of the KDP announcement was that Amazon was “going to use the same model [as agency] to chase […]

Sitting in court — and reporting on what transpires there — is a curious and incomplete experience. Witnesses do not recount a complete narrative for the court that is then subject to further probing. Rather, the live exchanges are a detailed follow-up to written “exhibits.” So most of the questioning is driven by documents the witnesses are asked to review, only portions of which are shown on screens not even visible from the press gallery. The government has been posting many of their exhibits on their web site. The defense, to the best of our knowledge and searching, has not […]

Moments of color in Judge Denise Cote’s courtroom on Thursday included defense attorney Howard Heiss explaining “Jedi mind tricks” (“a technique used by the Jedis to persuade others to do things…by powers of suggestion”); and aggressive questioning of Google executive Tom Turvey by lead defense attorney Orin Snyder that confirmed Turvey doesn’t have an iPad and had him disagreeing with the statement that “Google is a powerful company in the media and entertainment space.” We learned that people within Google call their ebookstore “Play Books,” and saw another attorney bark at Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti for looking at his lawyer too […]

Wednesday’s ebook pricing trial against Apple finished with testimony from Amazon executive Russ Grandinetti, who will return to the stand on Thursday, with colleagues Laura Porco and David Naggar to follow. He said that during the original switch to agency, “it was our belief the reason we were in this position is that some of the publishers wanted to slow down the success of Kindle.” Grandinetti agreed with Apple attorney Howard Heiss’s characterization of the original meeting in Seattle at the end of January, 2010 with Macmillan executives John Sargent and Brian Napack to first discuss new contract models as tense, and […]

Just before lunch on Day 2 of the Department of Justice’s trial against Apple, Penguin ceo David Shanks took the stand to explain his version of how the publisher’s agency model agreement with Apple came into being. Unlike the clipped, succinct testimony of Apple general counsel Kevin Saul, who finished his stint in the witness box earlier in the morning, Shanks’ manner was more expansive, even when it appeared to raise some eyebrows in the eyes of the court. At the close of the day’s testimony, Shanks’ spoke volumes when his explanation of the economic nuances of the agency model […]