In the publisher/Apple antitrust suit, one criticism that has emerged from the publisher partisan camp is that the DoJ is picking on them for trying to defend themselves against Amazon’s growing monopoly, while turning a blind eye to what Amazon is doing. However, the Wall Street Journal is running a piece in which it talks to antitrust scholars to try to dispel some misconceptions. U.S. antitrust law, the article explains, isn’t about protecting little companies from big ones, or even necessarily preventing monopolies as long as the monopolies are reached through legal means. It’s about preventing companies from...

The perception and reality of e-book prices have been a matter of strong consumer opinions ever since Amazon first hit it big with its $9.99 bestseller titles and then publishers implemented agency pricing over the “devaluing” of e-books. Both sides seem to like to accuse each other of “entitlement”, and some folks can get quite impassioned about it. With the Department of Justice agency pricing lawsuit, these opinions have been making themselves known again—or perhaps it’s just that people are finding an excuse to notice. Digital Book World has a piece discussing how e-book pricing makes consumers “upset and...

TorrentFreak reports that For-Dummies publisher John Wiley & Sons has moved to file suit against several BitTorrent users who allegedly shared its books online. The majority of BitTorrent sharers to whom it sent nastygrams capitulated with $750 settlements, However, four users have not: New York residents Jeff Ng, Ralph Mohr, Robert Carpenter and Xiaoshu Chen are no longer anonymous Does. Wiley is proceeding to call for a full jury trial against the quartet in which they will face accusations of copyright infringement and up to $150,000 in penalties for each offense. TorrentFreak writes that...

On PaidContent, Laura Hazard Owen has written a handy little guide to the implications of the DoJ-imposed settlement terms for readers. She discusses the effects that readers can expect to see as the settlement takes effect, sometime after the comment period ends in June. Readers will see the most effects on books published by Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins, the three publishers who meekly chose to settle with the DoJ, though those effects won’t start until June, when the 60-day comment period on the settlement is up. When it takes effect, publishers will have one week...

Does proving a conspiracy require hard evidence? PaidContent reports that plaintiffs who have filed suit against Apple and the major publishers who implemented agency pricing say in their latest filing that indirect evidence of price jumps and other “plus factors” are all that is necessary, according to a 1939 Supreme Court precedent pertaining to movie studios who fixed film prices. The filing points out a number of events such as several separate deals finalized over just a few days, a trade association meeting when executives from Hachette and Macmillan were seen together in a bar, and the way that...

PaidContent has an update on the status of “For Dummies” publisher John Wiley’s court cases against individuals accused of illicitly sharing various “For Dummies” books via BitTorrent. The company was able to unmask 46 “John Doe” defendants, 40 of whom were dropped from the case after apparently settling for an undisclosed amount. The publisher is going to go forward with suing the remaining, now-identified six. It’s not clear whether any settlements Wiley gets out of this case will cover even a fraction of the costs of bringing it, or whether it will act as a deterrent or just make...

The iPad can be great for letting people read, but it can be just as good for letting certain people speak. As I’ve previously mentioned, autistic, nonverbal, and otherwise disabled people who have trouble talking can make use of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) apps to say the words they can’t say for themselves. However, today I learned about a legal battle shaping up against a popular $299.99 AAC app for the iPad called Speak For Yourself. Dana Nieder, parent of a 4-year-old nonverbal child and extremely satisfied user of Speak For Yourself, posts to her blog that a pair of...

Remember that lawsuit from Hasbro complaining about Asus naming its new Android tablet the “Transformer Prime,” out of concern that consumers might confuse it with Hasbro’s popular transforming robot toy line? It’s still going to trial, but a judge has expressed sufficient skepticism over Hasbro’s claims to deny the company’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped Asus from continuing to sell its tablets pending the outcome of the trial. The judge didn’t find sufficient resemblance between the Android tablet and Hasbro’s toys to warrant worries over consumer confusion, and noted Asus’s case is strengthened by the...

Stick a fork in Rights Haven’t, I mean Righthaven—it’s done. Techdirt reports that the company has stopped showing up at court cases altogether, leading them to be dismissed “for lack of prosecution.” CEO Steve Gibson is now working for the Las Vegas office of Detroit-based law firm Dickenson Wright (while being investigated by the Nevada Bar) and main lawyer Shawn Mangano has stopped responding to attempts to contact him altogether. Meanwhile, well-known (and high-priced) copyright lawyer Dale Cendali, whom Righthaven hired last year, has withdrawn from all Righthaven cases (claiming she was only hired for a few small...

An update on that story from a couple months ago about a coalition of Chinese authors planning to sue Apple over their works being sold in the iTunes store without authorization. China’s state-owned news agency Xinhua reports that the coalition has grown to 22 authors, who are claiming that 95 of their works have been sold without their permission. The story doesn’t really have many details about how these books got into the store. It does say Apple was “too slow” to remove them after the authors complained, though doesn’t say just how slow it was. A local Apple...

A brief follow-up to my latest post about copyright troll Righthaven’s travails: Wendy Davis at the Daily Online Examiner reports that the EFF has helped one of Righthaven’s defendants, the Democratic Underground, file suit against Stephens Media, the company that launched Righthaven and licensed or sold it its copyright, to obtain a declaratory judgment that the posting of a five-sentence excerpt from a 50-sentence article counted as fair use and therefore Stephens had no right to sic Righthaven on them. After Stephens conceded, the judge ruled against the company, and the Democratic Underground and EFF are now eligible...

Righthaven could now be called “Rights Haven’t” for real. Long-time Righthaven critic Steve Green gleefully reports that a Las Vegas federal judge has stripped Righthaven of 278 copyrights and its own trademark. Apparently Righthaven couldn’t even be bothered to show up at the hearing, and the judge decided they had acquiesced to the transferal by default. Marc Randazza, a Las Vegas attorney representing Hoehn, said after the hearing that [Judge Philip] Pro’s order wipes out Righthaven’s interest in all of its pending lawsuits and appeals. Since Righthaven now owns no copyrights, it has nothing...