Macmillan reaches e-book pricing settlement with DOJ

Now all that's left is Apple. The U.S. Justice Department says it will continue to litigate against the electronics giant for conspiring with Macmillan and four of the other largest U.S. book publishers to raise e-book prices.
Shara Tibken
by Shara Tibken
February 8, 2013 8:02 AM PST
The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a settlement with Macmillan in an antitrust case related to e-book pricing, leaving only Apple to battle the suit.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed last April, federal prosecutors accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to artificially hike prices. The same day, the Justice Department announced it had reached settlements with three publishers but said Apple and the other two publishers had opted to fight the charges. Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which publishes CNET) agreed to settle.

Penguin, one of the two publisher holdouts, reached a settlement in December. Macmillan, formally known as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC, was the last publisher to settle with the Justice Department. The DOJ said today that it will continue its suit against Apple.

CNET has contacted Apple for comment regarding Macmillan's settlement and will update this report when we learn more. In a legal memo filed in August, Apple called the previous settlements "fundamentally unfair, unlawful, and unprecedented." The trial against Apple is scheduled to begin in June.

As with the other settlements, Macmillan agreed to immediately lift restrictions it had imposed on discounting and other promotions by e-book retailers. It also will be prohibited from entering into new agreements with similar restrictions until December 2014.

The proposed settlement agreement will impose a strong antitrust compliance program on Macmillan, including requirements that it provide advance notification to the Justice Department of any e-book ventures it plans to undertake jointly with other publishers and regularly report to the department on any communications it has with other publishers. Also for five years, Macmillan will be forbidden from agreeing to any kind of most favored nation provision that could undermine the effectiveness of the settlement.
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