Apple Claims US Government Sides with ‘Amazon’s Monopolistic Grip’ in E-book Case

By John Ribeiro,

The U.S. government has sided with monopoly rather than competition in bringing a case of e-book price-fixing against Apple, the company said in a filing on Tuesday before a federal court.

The Department of Justice filed in April an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five large publishers, accusing the companies of working together to raise prices of e-books, in retaliation for competitor Amazon.com pricing most e-books at US$9.99 beginning in late 2007.

Three publishers – Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster – agreed to settle the lawsuit, the DOJ said.

Apple’s reply to the court is in line with a statement issued by Apple in April after the DOJ filed its case, in which it said that “the launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry.” The company added: “Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.”

The government’s complaint does not allege that all e-book prices, or even most e-book prices, increased after Apple entered the market, the company said in the filing before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Apple had in fact no interest in seeing price increases, it said.

The government’s complaint against Apple is fundamentally “flawed as a matter of fact and law,” Apple said. The company said it has not conspired with anyone, was not aware of any alleged conspiracy by others, and never fixed prices.

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Effort to ban Tintin comic book fails in Belgium

Offensive as Tintin au Congo may be, recourse to the law is misguided and counterproductive.

A Belgian court has dismissed Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu’s claim that Tintin in the Congo is racist. Photograph: Sebastien Pirlet/AFP

By Jogchum Vrielink

Tintin is experiencing new and exciting adventures these days. Not just in the cinema, but in Belgian courts as well.

Bienvenu Mbuto Mondondo, a Congolese national studying in Brussels, filed suit to obtain an injunction against the continued publication, distribution and sale of Hergé’s comic book Tintin in the Congo (Tintin au Congo), as well as seeking to have the book withdrawn from bookshops and libraries in Belgium. Mondondo did so on the basis of alleged violations of the Belgian anti-racism legislation. In subsidiary order he demanded that a disclaimer be printed on the comic’s cover, warning of its offensive nature, along with the inclusion of an introduction of a similar nature. Mondondo was supported in his claims by the minority organization Conseil représentatif des associations noires (Cran).

On 10 February 2012, the Brussels Court of First Instance rejected all the applicants’ claims. The Court also rejected the counterclaims by Casterman, the series’ publisher, and Moulinsart, the company which was set up to protect and promote the work of Hergé. Both had asked for 15,000 euros as compensation for ‘vexatious proceedings’.

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‘Three Cups’ author was overwhelmed

 

By MATT VOLZ

“Three Cups of Tea” author Greg Mortenson says the dismissal of a civil lawsuit that accused him of fabricating book passages to make money for himself and his charity confirms his faith in the U.S. justice system.

Mortenson told The Associated Press in an email Monday that he has been overwhelmed at times dealing with the lawsuit, a Montana investigation into the Central Asia Institute and surgery to repair a small hole in his heart.

“At times, facing so much was overwhelming and devastating, however, my attorneys always offered steadfast encouragement to stay positive and keep the high ground, even when subjected to false allegations, vicious name-calling and slander,” Mortenson said.

U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon rejected the civil lawsuit Monday, dismissing claims that Mortenson, his publisher, his co-author and his charity conspired to make Mortenson into a false hero to sell books and raise money for the charity. Haddon called the claims overly broad, flimsy and speculative.

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​Author faces civil suit over ‘Three Cups of Tea’

  

  By MATT VOLZ |

Regardless of whether claims are true that author Greg Mortenson fabricated portions of “Three Cups of Tea,” neither he nor his publisher can be held liable because the First Amendment protects exaggerations or lies in memoirs, his publisher’s attorney said Wednesday.

Penguin Group (USA) attorney Jonathan Herman and attorneys for Mortenson, co-author David Oliver Relin and Mortenson’s charity, the Central Asia Institute, asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by four people who bought Mortenson’s bestselling books.

The lawsuit was filed after “60 Minutes” and author Jon Krakauer published reports last year that Mortenson fabricated parts of “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones Into Schools,” which recount his efforts to build schools in Central Asia.

The suit claims Mortenson and the others committed fraud, deceit and were involved in a racketeering conspiracy in publishing lies.

Mortenson headed the conspiracy to set himself up as a false hero so that he could sell millions of books and raise tens of millions of dollars for his charity, the plaintiffs’ attorney Zander Blewett said.

“Mortenson obviously is the main, main liar,” he said. “He has just drafted himself a web of deception … and used it to raise $62 million.”

In arguing to reject the case, neither Herman nor Mortenson attorney John Kauffman addressed the specific fabrication claims.

Herman said the proper place for someone to object to the books is in the sphere of public debate, not in a courtroom to be prosecuted by self-appointed “truth police.” ”The First Amendment permits someone who writes an autobiography to exaggerate or even lie,” Herman said.

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Book Publishing’s Real Nemesis

Eric Holder with Sharis Pozen, acting assistant attorney general, discussing the price-fixing case.

By DAVID CARR

The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon — which not long ago had a 90 percent stranglehold on e-books — and instead, struck five of the six biggest publishers and Apple, a minor player in the realm of books.

That’s the modern equivalent of taking on Standard Oil but breaking up Ed’s Gas ’N’ Groceries on Route 19 instead.

Last week, the Justice Department sued in United States District Court in New York, charging that Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster had colluded to fix e-book prices. (Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have already agreed to settle.)

The suit has its roots in 2007, when Amazon released the Kindle and began selling some of the most sought-after books for $9.99 in order to bolster sales of its device. Not surprisingly, booksellers and publishers hated this price with the force of 10,000 suns because it made physical books sold for $25 or more seem outrageously overpriced.

Under the wholesale arrangement with Amazon, the publishers received half of the list price, which yielded better money, but gave them no control over the pricing of their product. With the introduction of the iPad, publishers got a crack at remaking their deal because Apple allowed them to set the price and then took a cut of 30 percent.

That so-called agency model developed with Apple allowed publishers, not just Amazon, to set the price and in a move that caught the interest of the Justice Department, they all came up with pretty much the same price. (Why the crumbling book business is worthy of so much attention from Justice while Wall Street skates is a broader question we’ll leave for another day.)

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Authors Guild head (and attorney) Scott Turow warns DOJ about the effects of law suit

By Paul Oliver

The Department of Justice’s confounding lawsuit against five of the Big Six publishing companies and Apple, Inc. for price-collusion has been widely regarded as a “out of the frying pan and into the fire” sort of move. The tragic lawsuit seemingly damages competition in benefit of the expansion of the leading market influence (Amazon) and thus undermines the supposed goal of the laws it seeks to uphold.

The list of the suit’s many detractors was joined on Friday by Author’s Guild President Scott Turow when the bestselling author and lawyer offered a clear-eyed and damning open letter concerning the suit. Turow’s letter opens with a grim warning that strikes at the heart of the matter:

Yesterday’s report that the Justice Department may be near filing an antitrust lawsuit against five large trade book publishers and Apple is grim news for everyone who cherishes a rich literary culture.

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Wimpy Kid author files lawsuit against Zombie Kid publisher

 

Lawsuit

| The Bookseller staff

Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, has filed a trademark lawsuit against Antarctic Press, publisher of a series of books called Diary of a Zombie Kid, according to US press reports.

Kinney and his company Wimpy Kid Inc. filed the suit on Tuesday this week (20th December) against Antarctic Press in a US District Court in Boston for violating trademark laws by publishing books too similar in appearance to the Wimpy Kid series.

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Nobel author Gabriel García Márquez wins 17-year legal fight over murder classic

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: final victory in legal battle over his book Chronicle of a Death Foretold that began in 1994. Photograph: Miguel Tovar/AP

Colombian court rules against man who claimed author used his life story for main character in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

By Tom Phillips

On the day they were going to kill him, Cayetano Gentile Chimento got up oblivious to his impending murder. Within hours the dashing Colombian medical student was dead, repeatedly stabbed for allegedly deflowering another man’s bride.

Few would today remember the 1951 murder, but for the intervention of one of Latin America’s best-loved authors. The killing served as the inspiration for Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold – a 1981 classic that cemented the author’s reputation as a literary master.

But Márquez’s blend of fact and fiction also led to accusations that he had unlawfully misappropriated the life-story of another man and prompted a lawsuit by Miguel Reyes Palencia, who claimed that Márquez had based the novel’s main character, Bayardo San Román, on his life.

This week those accusations were finally dismissed as a supreme court in the Colombian city of Barranquilla ruled that Palencia had no right to compensation. The case against Márquez was first brought in 1994, when Palencia claimed that the 1982 Nobel literature laureate had unlawfully used his life story as the basis for Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Palencia demanded 50% of the book’s royalties as well as a co-author credit.

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Mall Developer Sues Indiana to Force Amazon to Collect Sales Tax

Indiana mall developer Simon Property Group, owned by billionaire real estate developer Herbert Simon (who also owns Kirkus Reviews), has filed suit against the state of Indiana to force it to collect taxes on sales made through Amazon.com. SPG said it is not seeking monetary damages and filed suit to protect the physical store retailers who are tenants at the 27 shopping centers it owns in Indiana.

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Tintin in the Congo not racist, says Belgian judicial adviser

Mbutu Bienvenu holds a placard that shows a scene from the book Tintin in the Congo. Photograph: Virginia Mayo/AP

Setback for legal bid to have Hergé’s 1931 adventure banned.

Reuters

A Belgian judicial adviser has recommended the country’s courts reject a legal bid to have a book featuring fictional boy hero Tintin banned for racism, court documents showed.

Valery de Theux de Meylandt, a Belgian Procureur du Roi whose opinion is requested and typically followed by the court, advised judges in a written statement to rule against campaigner Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo’s application to have Tintin in the Congo banned for racism.

De Theux de Meylandt said in the document seen by Reuters that Tintin author Georges Remi (better known as Hergé) did not intend to incite racial hatred when he depicted his cartoon hero on an adventure in the former Belgian colony in a 1931 work that was updated in 1946.

“The representations (of African people) by Herge are a reflection of his time,” De Theux de Meylandt wrote.

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