This afternoon, Apple and the DOJ will be in court to decide the fate of the agency model implementation in the iBookstore. The court has already ruled that Apple has been working with publishers to price-fix and raise the prices of ebooks, but now a punishment must be determined.
This morning, the DOJ responded to publishers’ concerns about the remedies and claimed that, since they are even responding together, they have shown once again how they are banded together (PDF of full response – via GigaOM):
The DOJ’s proposed solution included the following:
Apple responded by calling the proposed remedy ‘draconian and punitive‘. The publishers also spoke out against the ruling and remedy.
We’ll soon find out how the court will rule and what repercussions this will have in the industry. Apple’s lawyers will be out in full force today, as Apple will be in court for the ebook case, the ITC patent case against Samsung, and a hearing of Apple’s appeal against the court’s unfavorable ruling regarding the ban of older Samsung products being sold.
