The 13-member board of the Association of Authors Representatives has sent a letter to the Department of Justice opposing the proposed agency ebook pricing settlement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In a separate email, the AAR called on members “to express their views on the settlement to the DOJ and we hope you will also urge your clients to do the same. Your note might address whether you feel the settlement will foster competition and well-being in the literary marketplace, or the opposite…. We believe it is tremendously important that we all be heard on this […]
DOJ
Judge Relieves Two Settling Publishers From Discovery
Judge Denise Cote has agreed for now that pending settlements with state attorneys general across the country with Harper Collins and Hachette Book Group might alleviate them from class action suits. The judge issued a stay, until July 11, freeing those two publishers from any depositions and discovery by the class action attorneys. The companies are said to be aiming towards settlements with all 50 states, and have argued that such a broad settlement could effectively cover all potential claimants who are part of the class.
What Judge Denise Cote’s Past Rulings May Say About The eBook Price Fixing Case
When the Department of Justice sued Apple and the “Agency Five” publishers, they requested the case be presided over by Southern District Court of New York federal judge Denise Cote, since she was already hearing the proposed class action lawsuit that merged a number of actions in New York and California. We thought it might be instructive to look at some of the key cases Judge Cote has ruled on since she was appointed as a federal judge in 1994 that may provide some insight into how she might approach the ebook price fixing suits by the federal government and […]
Questions and Comments Continue on the Agency Pricing Settlement and Suits
The WSJ makes a significant discovery in the e-book pricing dispute today–they have unearthed a rare photo of Macmillan ceo John Sargent wearing a necktie, along with a three-piece formal suit. (The Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan picture apparently comes from the Graham Windham Bicentennial Ball in 2006.) Perhaps too late to be of any use to his publishing constituents, the Journal also has New York Senator Chuck Schumer saying, “I feel absolutely befuddled by the lawsuit. For the Antitrust Division to step in as the big protector of Amazon doesn’t seem to make any sense from an antitrust point of view. […]
Judge Sets Hearing on DOJ Settlements for July 27 as Hachette and Harper Near Settlement With 50 States
At a status conference Wednesday afternoon in New York District Court, Judge Denise Cote heard from lawyers representing Apple, contesting publishers Penguin and Macmillan, and the three publishers – Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins — that settled with the Department of Justice and are working towards a similar outcome with as many as all 50 states. Hachette and Harper confirmed they signed a memorandum of understanding with 16 states and Puerto Rico, Bloomberg reported, and “they hope to have a settlement with all 50 states completed by June 11,” exactly 60 days from when both the DOJ and state […]
Press Defends Publishers Over Justice (and Amazon)
It’s rare to see the NYT and WSJ philosophically aligned on how the government uses its power, but they and others in press seem to be coming together to raise questions about why the Department of Justice is beating up on publishers, apparently serving the interests of a retailer bigger than the entire industry. Holman Jenkins Jr. writes in the WSJ, “in essence, Justice says that, beginning in 2008, several plankton, in the form of five publishers, conspired against a whale, Amazon, whose monopoly clout had imposed a $9.99 retail price for e-books.” He argues: “Given Amazon’s dominance, it’s hardly […]