Apple will today defend itself in a Manhattan court against a Department of Justice case accusing it of leading a cartel designed to force up prices of ebooks, Tim Cook having recently told the AllThingsD D11 conference that the case against it was “bizarre.”
We tend to agree with AllThingsD that it’s tough to see how Apple can win the case when all five of its alleged ‘fellow cartel members’ have already held up their hands and settled with the DOJ, and where there is a clear paper-trail showing that Steve Jobs was instrumental in leading the changes that led to the price-fixing allegations …
It’s alleged that Jobs wrote to five major publishers – HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan – and invited them to switch to the new model, and the DOJ seems to have some pretty compelling evidence of this, including an email from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, a senior exec at the parent company of HarperCollins:
Jobs appeared to confirm the story in a comment to his biographer Walter Isaacson, saying that he told the publishers:
US District Judge Denise Coote even took the unusual step of announcing that she believed that the DOJ would be able to prove its case.
Yet Apple seems confident it can win a case which it describes as based solely on hearsay.
We’ll keep you advised …
