“According to a recent filing, publishers have paid a total of $166,158,426 to settle state and consumer e-book price fixing charges, including an additional $3,909,000 to settle consumer claims in Minnesota. The figures come from a letter filed with Judge Denise Cote earlier this month by Texas attorney general Greg Abbott, and do not include legal fees and other court costs. Minnesota was not part of the original state suit and pursued its own litigation.

Notably, the letter includes the total damage awards calculated by the states and lists the amount publishers agreed to pay as a percentage of those damages. In that regard, the deals look pretty good for the initial three settling publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster). Hachette was calculated to be on the hook for a total of $62,280,000, but has paid $32,686,165, roughly 52% of what it was liable for. HarperCollins paid $20,168,710, about 65% of $31,140,000 it was assessed for. And Simon & Schuster was on the hook for $42,920,000, and paid $18,303,551 or 42% of assessed damages.”

via Publishers Have Paid $166 Million to Settle E-book Claims.

“For the past year, to the rising horror of publishing-industry insiders, the federal government has been on a campaign to stamp out price fixing in the e-book trade between the last remaining major publishing houses and Apple, which sells e-books for its iPads and other devices. On Wednesday, Denise Cote, a federal judge in Manhattan, ruled that Apple had indeed colluded with publishers to raise prices of e-books — in the process giving aid and comfort to Amazon, the single strongest monopolistic force in the book business.The case is far from over. Apple is one of the world’s largest corporations, and it is in a knife fight with Amazon and others over the future of digital content, so you can count on it to carry on its appeals as long as it can. But Wednesday’s ruling follows an earlier decision by the major publishers to settle with the government rather than fight the case, so in some ways we are already living in the economic environment Justice Department lawyers believe is best for the book business. It isn’t pretty. Borders is gone, Barnes & Noble is on the ropes, and with the recently approved merger of Random House and Penguin Books, the already absurdly conglomerated Big Six publishers have become the Big Five.”

via The Millions : The Apple Antitrust Case and the Widgetification of Books.

A U.S. government lawyer opened a civil trial by portraying Apple as a corporate bully that swaggered into the market for electronic books in 2010, forcing an end to price competition and costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Justice Department attorney, Lawrence Buterman, said Monday a dramatic price increase in e-books was “no accident or unforeseen outcome” but the result of a deliberate plan by Apple and five book publishers to eliminate Seattle-based Amazon.com’s $9.99 bargain price for popular e-books.

He asked U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, who is overseeing a trial expected to last several weeks, to find that the computer company had violated anti-trust laws. 

Via: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/06/04/apple-trial-ebook-prices-publishers/

Defending itself from U.S. Department of Justice allegations of e-book price fixing, Apple on Tuesday pointed to the diverse contract terms it made with five major publishing houses as evidence against purported conspiracy.

A follow-up report to yesterday’s proceedings from AllThingsD says Apple lawyer Orin Snyder brought up the negotiated terms multiple times during the bench trial now in front of U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote.

The composition of Apple’s agreements with five of the biggest book publishers in the world is central to the Justice Department’s antitrust argument, which holds that the companies worked hand-in-hand to falsely inflate e-book prices in the iBookstore. At the core of Apple’s pricing strategy was a so-called “most favored nations” clause that allows publishers to set e-book pricing, but precludes them from selling the same content to other retailers at a lower price.

via: Apple argues diverse book publisher contracts prove non-collusion in DOJ suit.

Here is the DoJ opening statement (June 3, 2013):

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/706511-doj-opening-powerpoint.html#document/p1