The U.S. Justice Department is starting its legal pursuit of one of the biggest companies in America, Apple is being pursued for the alleged e-book price fixing that can go the edges of an antitrust law suit and is likely to end in a big loss for Apple. “It’s a harder case against Apple than the publishers,” says Geoffrey Manne, who teaches antitrust law at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Oregon and runs the International Center for Law and Economics. The Justice Department has put a 36 page complaint that actually puts into play a breakfast in a London hotel and dinners at Manhattan?s Picholine restaurant with all of the publishers without Apple actually even being present for the meetings. The Department of Justice “has a far better case against the publishers than Apple,” says Dominick Armentano, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Hartford and author of Antitrust and Monopoly who’s now affiliated with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. “If the CEOs of the various publishers got together in hotel rooms to discuss prices, they are sunk” and might as well settle, he says. So it will be interesting if this battle is really between the DOJ and Apple or the publishers. I will be keeping a close eye on this case and what ends up coming from it.
