Shane Cole
Apple on Thursday formally notified the court that they will appeal the guilty verdict and resulting injunctions handed down in July's e-book antitrust ruling.
Apple's fight against the Department of Justice will shift into the hands of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals as Cupertino's lead attorney, Orin Snyder, filed an official notice of appeal Thursday on behalf of the iPhone maker. Snyder previously indicated the company's plans to appeal in an August letter to Judge Denise Cote.
The notice comes nearly three months after Apple was found guilty of conspiring with major publishers to raise e-book prices and just one day before an injunction handed down as a result of the verdict was set to go into effect. The injunction would force Apple to stagger contract renegotiations with publishers and bring on an external compliance monitor, among other punishments.
"Notice is hereby given that Defendant Apple Inc. (“Appleâ€) appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from the Plaintiff United States’ Final Judgment," Snyder wrote, "including the injunction the Court entered against Apple."
Apple is not required to submit its formal arguments for the appeal until early 2014, according to GigaOm.
On Friday, publisher Simon & Schuster filed a separate notice of appeal, though the CBS subsidiary only intends to fight the injunction due to its effect on the company's ability to renegotiate its contracts with Apple. Simon & Schuster settled with the Department of Justice in 2012.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
82 Comments
Just move on - it is what it is - and move forward!
Excellent, and doing it by the book!
Good grief! I thought this was finally over. Let it go already!
[quote name="holmstockd" url="/t/159936/apple-appeals-verdict-punishment-in-e-book-antitrust-case#post_2411487"]Just move on - it is what it is - and move forward! [/quote] It's not that simple, unfortunately. There is the very substantial ideological issue that has a meaningful impact on how Apple conducts negotiations. The settlement issues are more minor and don't have a real impact on Apple, but the precedent this sets is simply not acceptable to them.
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/159936/apple-appeals-verdict-punishment-in-e-book-antitrust-case#post_2411483"]Apple was found guilty of conspiring with major publishers to raise e-book prices[/quote] Meanwhile in France, the government raises Amazon's overall book prices to encourage competition: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/french-mps-bill-amazon-discount-books "Since 1981 French law has fixed book-prices so that readers pay the same whether they buy online, from a big high street chain, or from a small bookseller. Extensive discounting is banned. The law, which applies to all online booksellers, does allow for a small amount of discounting – as long as it is no more than 5%. Small booksellers argue they cannot compete with Amazon because it provides free postage and free fast delivery deals on top of 5% discount." So if Apple can't compete with Amazon because their prices are too low to make a viable business out of it and takes steps to keep the business healthy, they are punished. In France, it's the law to fix the prices. The problem is, they're both right. If retailers collude with suppliers to keep prices high then it costs consumers more and free market competition can't do anything about it. If big retailers use their infrastructure to price things so cheaply that smaller businesses can't compete with them, they'll drive them out of business very easily and people will lose jobs. Implementing laws one way or the other and punishing selectively isn't the right thing to do but they can't keep the prices low enough to avoid harming consumers and high enough to encourage competition at the same time.