Attorneys for all of the settling publishers (Harper, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House and Macmillan) jointly filed objections to the DOJ’s proposed injunction against Apple on Wednesday: “Under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish the settling defendants by prohibiting agreements with Apple using an agency model.” (For the record, they filed together “solely for the convenience of the Court and in the interests of judicial economy.”) The fundamental arguments — and even some of the quotes cited — will be familiar to readers who remember our Monday post, About Last Week. The filing notes that Justice’s […]
Legal
Docket Watch
We’ve already reported that Judge Denise Cote will hold a conference on Friday afternoon to discuss the DOJ and Apple’s extravagantly punitive and lenient (respectively) proposals for how she should enforce her guilty verdict against Apple. But first, by 10:00 Thursday morning, Judge Cote wants to hear further from Apple in writing — specifically on one of their four planned avenues of appeal. She has directed Apple to spell out “the evidence it believes was ‘improperly admitted, excluded or disregarded” during the trial. The filing containing Apple’s other arguments in the expected request to stay all proceedings pending an appeal […]
About Last Week
There was abundant coverage of the Department of Justice’s proposed penalties against Apple following the finding of guilt in the ebook pricing trial but as far as we can tell no other outlet — even within trade publishing — has focused on the astounding elements of those proposals with respect to book publishing. In practical terms, Justice is asking Judge Cote to throw out the essential conditions of the signed settlements already agreed to with book publishers, to be replaced with far harsher and longer lasting conditions. The two important limitations on the original publisher settlements were a two-year limit […]
Justice Asks Court to Force Unlimited eBook Discounting for Five Years, And to Make Apple Toss All Content Contracts That Fix Prices
A deal is a deal except when it isn’t, apparently, as the Department of Justice has asked Judge Denise Cote to essentially throw out the settlement terms she already approved and ratified for Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster (and is about to issue final orders on for Macmillan and Penguin) — and impose a harsher set of selling conditions on the publishers as part of the “punishment” of Apple following Judge Cote’s finding of guilt. They now want five years of no agency at all for ebooks at Apple, with the expressed hope that those terms spread […]
Legal: Rowling Sued Leakers and Wins “Substantial Damages”; Klinger Moves For Summary Judgment Against Conan Doyle Estate
Not only was JK Rowling “very angry” with the attorney Chris Gossage at Russells, who leaked her secret writing identity, but she apparently sued both Gossage and his wife’s best friend Judith Callegari, whose ill-considered tweet unmasked “Robert Galbraith.” A statement read by Rowling’s new attorney in a UK High Court indicated she “was angry and distressed that her confidences had been betrayed and this was very much aggravated by repeated speculation that the leak had, in fact, been a carefully co-ordinated publicity stunt by her, her agent and her publishers designed to increase sales.” Plus, “The claimant has been […]
Pinkus Seeks to Dismiss Latest McIntosh & Otis Suit
Though Samuel Pinkus has yet to respond to Harper Lee’s copyright lawsuit filed last May, he did file a motion to dismiss McIntosh & Otis’s suit from June, alleging he deliberately moved money from one shell company to another to avoid paying the agency more than $850,000. In his motion Pinkus called M&O’s suit a “work of fiction” that is “replete with misleading plot holes” and “wholesale cribbing from the complaint of another party’s pending action” (referring to Lee’s Federal suit). On the matter of whether Pinkus is the alter ego of Veritas Media, and is thus liable to pay that […]