Apple ebook trial

Apple is having a busy time in court at the moment. Not only is it defending the iPod DRM class action, but is this morning beginning its appeal of the verdict of last year’s ebook trial.

The court ruled that Apple was guilty of anti-competitive practices in two ways. First, the company asked publishers to switch from wholesale pricing – where publishers sold in bulk to retailers, who set their own prices – to an agency model, where publishers set retail prices and retailers took a commission. The court ruled that this reduced price competition … 
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Apple’s prospects of a successful appeal against the ruling in the ebooks trial may be improved by a brief filed by two economists from Caltech and NYU who suggest that the ruling was in error and call for it to be reversed.

Apple was found guilty of anti-competitive practices on two grounds. First, it asked publishers to switch from a wholesale pricing model – where publishers sold books in bulk and retailers set their own prices – to an agency model, where publishers set prices and retailers took a percentage cut. This, the court found, reduced price competition … 
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Steve Jobs originally rejected the idea of an ebook store when Eddy Cue suggested it, changing his mind only when Cue re-pitched it to him after development of the iPad, reports AllThingsD from the ebook trial.

Testifying in the DOJ’s e-book price-fixing case Thursday, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said that when he first approached Jobs with the idea of a bookstore in the fall of 2009, the Apple co-founder dismissed it.

“He wasn’t interested,” Cue said. “Steve never felt that the Mac or the iPhone were ideal reading devices. In the case of the phone, the screen was smaller, and in the case of the Mac, you had this keyboard and device, and it didn’t feel like a book.” … 
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