A lawyer for the United States government had some hard questions to answer today as he tried to defend the judge’s ruling that Apple Inc worked with five publishers to raise ebook prices. Some judges at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York looked to be sympathetic to Apple’s stand that it engaged in pro-competitive conduct in 2010 when it went into an ebook market dominated mostly by Amazon. At that time, Amazon had a 90 percent market share of the ebook market.
Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs asked the lawyer why it was wrong to get together with publishers to defeat a “monopolist” that used “predatory pricing.” He went on to say that “It’s like the mice getting together to put a bell on the cat.” The lawyer said that no publisher alone would have gone into the deals with Apple unless there was the purpose to conspire to drive up ebook prices. Some ebook prices went up to $12.99 or $14.99 from the $9.99 charged by Amazon.
