Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Judge orders mediation in ebook price-fixing suit

In the US, judge Denise Cote has ordered that all the parties involved in an ebook price-fixing case instigated by Australian software company DNAML against Apple and the five ‘agency publishers’ enter mediation. According to Publishers Weekly, Cote ‘outlined a schedule that could have the case ready for trial by late 2015’, but first ordered that the parties enter mediation in December. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, DNAML filed a suit in September 2013 alleging that it was harmed ‘directly and as a proximate result’ of the agency pricing scheme agreed to by Apple and the five publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin. DNAML’s suit was later joined by Lavoho and Abbey House Media. In June, Cote refused to dismiss the suit and scheduled a pre-trial conference for late July.

 

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Category: International news