The U.S. Department of Justice and several states claimed that Apple facilitated a conspiracy among book publishers to raise the retail prices of e-books and wrest pricing control away from Amazon. In another suit involving publishersin this case magazine publishersthe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated a conspiracy complaint and stated that the lower court’s inquiry under the plausibility pleading standard was “misdirected” because the court improperly chose one plausible inference over another.
Other antitrust developments of note included the Federal Trade Commission’s 3-1 decision to close its investigation into Express Scripts’ acquisition of Medco, combining two of the nation’s three largest pharmacy benefits managers, and a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a prior class action settlement precluded a member of the settling class from bringing a new suit involving different defendants arising from the same alleged conspiracy.
