While the Department of Justice has previously acknowledged that it’s antritust division has been looking at agency ebook pricing, yesterday a particular DOJ official went on the record for the first time. Acting antitrust chief Sharis Pozen told a Congressional committee at a hearing that “we are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general,” quoted in the WSJ. Of course DOJ began an investigation into Apple’s practices in the market for digital music–where it actually is dominant–back in the spring of 2010. The Texas attorney general’s office has been looking at […]
Legal
Borders Creditors Will Get Only 4 to 10 Cents On the Dollar
Borders’ current plan for Chapter 11 liquidation proceedings got a preliminary go-ahead in federal bankruptcy court Monday afternoon, when Judge Martin Glenn signed off on the company’s explanatory disclosure statement of their liquidation program. Borders currently expects to pay unsecured creditors somewhere between 4 and 10 percent of the $812 million to $850 million they are owed. Among other items gleaned from the documents: at some point “during the course of these cases,” Perseus resigned from the creditors committee (as did Sony Music). Borders continues to insist that they “intend to market [their] Kobo stock for sale.” They hold roughly 9.9 percent […]
Authors Guild Says Kindle Lending Library Is “Outside the Bounds of the Publisher’s Authority”
In a strongly worded memo issued Monday afternoon, the Authors Guild took issue with Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library for Prime customers, in particular those titles available without express permission from publishers and authors. “How can Amazon get away with this? By giving its boilerplate contract with these publishers a tortured reading,” the Guild said, adding that permission appeared to be dispensed with “because, as Amazon apparently sees it, its contracts with these publishers merely require it to pay publishers the wholesale price of the books that Amazon Prime customers download.” The reasoning is “nonsense”, from the AG’s understanding of Amazon’s […]
Bookselling: BN Asked Justice to Investigate Microsoft; Australia Prepares to Reduce Import Ban to 14 Days
In documents filed with the International Trade Commission as part of the patent-infringement lawsuit brought by Microsoft, Barnes & Noble indicated that over the spring and summer they appealed to the Justice Department to investigate Microsoft on anti-trust grounds. “Microsoft’s willingness to bully small players with expensive litigation raises a substantial barrier to entry in any market in which it claims dominance,” general counself for BN Eugene DeFelice wrote, the WSJ reports. “Microsoft’s exorbitant licenses for its patents entrench the dominant players in the relevant markets because those players can afford to take a license, while small players cannot.” WSJ […]
HarperCollins Paid $200M To Acquire Thomas Nelson
News Corp disclosed in its quarterly 10-Q report on Friday that HarperCollins acquired Thomas Nelson for $200 million, and that the deal took place in October. The number is less than half the $473 million former owner InterMedia paid for Thomas Nelson back in 2006. The filing also disclosed that HarperCollins is now subject to 23 different consumer class action suits filed in New York and California relating to purported anti-trust issues and the use of the agency model by the six largest publishing houses. The defendants, including HarperCollins, filed a motion with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to […]
eNews: Wiley Sues 27 BitTorrent Users Over Piracy; New Funding For Educational App Publisher Mindshare; and More
Last week Wiley filed suit in Manhattan federal court against 27 John Doe defendants who illegally downloaded various FOR DUMMIES titles from Ukraine-based Torrent website demonoid.me on October 18 and 19. The John Does are identified for now only by their IP addresses, all within the state of New York. Wiley claims in the suit that these defendants “are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley. Although Wiley cannot determine at this time the precise amount of revenue that it has lost as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing of its copyrighted works though BitTorrent software, the […]