{"id":50849,"date":"2012-05-24T07:51:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T05:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=50849"},"modified":"2012-05-24T07:52:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T05:52:58","slug":"apple-slams-flawed-e-book-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/50849-apple-slams-flawed-e-book-lawsuit.html","title":{"rendered":"Apple slams “flawed” e-book lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc<\/a> is rejecting charges that it conspired to fix prices of electronic books, calling the U.S. government’s antitrust lawsuit a “fundamentally flawed” endeavor that could discourage competition and harm consumers.<\/p>\n

In a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Tuesday, Apple said it has not conspired with anyone or fixed prices for e-books in an effort to thwart Amazon.com Inc’s<\/a> dominance of that fast-growing market.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department accused Apple in April of colluding with five publishers to boost e-book prices in early 2010, as the Silicon Valley giant was launching its popular iPad tablet.<\/p>\n

Amazon, which makes the Kindle e-reader, had long sold e-books for as little as $9.99. The government complaint quoted Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs<\/a> as wanting to offer publishers a means to boost prices, and “create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”<\/p>\n

But Apple argued that its foray into e-books has actually fueled demand for e-books by forcing Amazon and rivals, including Barnes & Noble Inc<\/a>, to compete more aggressively, including by upgrading e-reader technology.<\/p>\n

“Apple’s entry into e-book distribution is classic procompetitive conduct” that created competition where none existed, Apple said in its court papers.<\/p>\n

“For Apple to be subject to hindsight legal attack for a business strategy well-recognized as perfectly proper sends the wrong message to the market,” it added. “The government’s complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law.”<\/p>\n

Apple also denied that the government “accurately characterized” the comment attributed to Jobs.<\/p>\n

A Justice Department spokeswoman referred a request for comment to the announcement of the April 11 lawsuit, when Attorney General Eric Holder said the alleged collusion cost consumers millions of dollars on the most popular e-book titles.<\/p>\n

The publishers Macmillan and Penguin Group, which are respectively units of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH and Pearson Plc, are fighting the antitrust case.<\/p>\n

News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster and Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group settled the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc is rejecting charges that it conspired to fix prices of electronic books, calling the U.S. government’s antitrust lawsuit a “fundamentally flawed” endeavor that could discourage competition and harm consumers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340871,"featured_media":50227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[36,723,605,7823,11945,609],"class_list":["post-50849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-active","tag-amazon","tag-apple","tag-barnes-noble","tag-e-book","tag-steve-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50851,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50849\/revisions\/50851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}