Apple slams Justice Dept.'s proposed e-book settlement

From CNET News.com: The Justice Department's proposed settlement with three book publishers over alleged e-book price fixing is "fundamentally unfair, unlawful, and unprecedented," Apple said in a legal memo today.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed in 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.

The proposed settlement -- with Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which publishes CNET) -- requires the three e-book publishers to terminate their existing contracts with Apple.

Apple, which denied the Justice Department's allegations, said the publishers' settlement unfairly impacts Apple and would be "irreversible."

The Justice Department "seeks to terminate and rewrite Apple's bargained for contracts before a single document has been introduced into evidence, before any witness has testified, and before the Court has resolved the disputed facts," Apple said in its memo (see below). "Once its existing contracts are terminated, Apple could not simply reinstate them after prevailing at trial."

"Nullifying a non-settling defendant's negotiated contract rights by another's settlement is fundamentally unfair, unlawful, and unprecedented," Apple argued.

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