Apple faces lawsuit in Canada for alleged monopoly in e-book market – Part 2

There are currently three similar suits in Canada, all seeking damages for any Canadians who have purchased an e-book. Painchaud, has maintained the stance against Apple, that if customers have purchased books on higher prices, they should get paid in return if Apple is proven guilty in this case.

Apple, on the other hand still maintains that publishers are the ones who decide the prices of books. The company has welcomed the DOJ accusations and plans to fight the charges in court in the U.S.

The case is expected to take several turns in the coming days for a number of reasons. Apple from a certain angle seems wrongly accused. According to the agency model, on which Apple and respective publishers work, both Apple and the publishers make losses in selling books, thanks to Amazon’s set benchmark of $9.99. The main problem is that Amazon still holds the lion’s share in this case and with an almost fixed price, it should be Amazon to face the lawsuit instead of Apple. Although Apple has lobbied with publishers at $12.99 price tag, it is backed by a mutual consent from both parties and both are incurring losses.

Amazon solely sold so cheap priced books to promote their e-readers and that can be called monopolizing or becoming of a monopolistic company.

The class action suits in Canada looks like to be using the very basic logic against Apple, that can be held against Amazon but due to the fact that the book sellers offer less prices in the market, they are immune to such opporibium. Even Painchaud admits the court proceedings could take years of litigation, though with some publishers already settling in the U.S., a partial conclusion could be reached soon.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Apr 21 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.