Southern District Judge Denise Cote (See Profile) Friday issued her final judgment imposing a permanent injunction on Apple Inc. to restrain the company from colluding with publishers in the pricing of e-books. Cote said the company may not enter into any agreement with publishers for "most favored nation" status when it comes to the retail pricing of books.
The final order covers agreements with publishers who settled prior to a trial where Cote found Apple liable for a price-fixing conspiracy to break Amazon.com's $9.99 pricing model and raise the price of e-books (NYLJ, July 11). The publishers are Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan. One of the restrictions, which vary in length from publisher to publisher, bars Apple from communicating "the status of its contractual negotiations with any other E-book publisher," including business plans or strategies, future retail prices, "any terms in the E-book publisher's agreement(s) with any retailer of books licensed or sold in any format" and "any terms in the E-books Publisher's agreement(s) with any author."
