Apple Inc. (AAPL) Defense And The E-Book Antitrust Case

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) defense team is all geared to defend itself this week in the U.S. government’s antitrust case against Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Defense And The E-Book Antitrust Case

Eddy Cue, Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software and services and the man behind the conspiracy to increase the price of e-book, in 2010, defended himself last week and returned to a Manhattan federal court on Monday to complete the questioning from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Attorney.

Witnesses to be testified

The witnesses that will take their stand were named in a list on Monday by Apple 2.0. They are.

  • Rob McDonald, head of Apple Inc.’s U.S. iBookstore operations.
  • Eric Gray, director of iTunes operations.
  • Theresa Horner, head of digital content at Barnes & Noble.
  • A trio of experts is also scheduled to testify about Apple’s effect on the e-book market.

The defense team of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will get three days to present all of its witnesses in the court. Summations will be held on Thursday following, which Denise Cote, U.S. District Judge will make the decision and will hand down the judgment within a few weeks.

Expected topics to be discussed

The topics that most probably would have been discussed on Monday are a dinner with Macmillan’s CEO that according to the government is apprehensive. The other topic will be the “Smoking Gun” e-mail from Steve Jobs to Cue, which was filed by DOJ as evidence. However, Cue denies that there was any such mail sent. Denise Cote will ask certain questions to Cue and the DOJ may cross question. After that the Government will rest its case and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will defend itself.

Case On Apple By DOJ

The alleged involvement of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the price fixing scheme has been questioned by DOJ, and it has tried to prove that the phone maker was involved with world’s five largest book publisher to artificially increase the cost of e-books. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) forayed into e-book business in 2010 following the launch of the first iPad.

Last week in his stand, Cue said that Apple was looking forward to following the wholesale model, which was adopted by market leader Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). The strategy that Amazon follows allows the retailer to set the price of the e-book after buying the titles from content owners. However, on discussing the terms with the publishers, Apple opted for adapting the agency model. According the model, the content owners could decide on the price under the most favored nation’s clause. The clause does not allow selling of same titles to another reseller at fewer prices without offering the same to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).

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