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"At trial, the Justice Department said it wanted to block Apple from using the agency business model for two years, and to stop the company from entering contracts that insure it will offer the lowest retail prices."

Does anyone know if this just applies to ebooks? Or might this ruling impact their ability to apply agency model and "most favored nation" contracts across all their content marketplaces?




From the ruling, it appears Apple is in trouble for knowingly and actively providing a venue for conspiring publishers to conspire, which is illegal. Interestingly, the judge points out there's no evidence that Apple wanted to raise prices at all. But there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the agency model or MFN clauses, except in relation to the publishers intent to increase prices.


That's one of the issues that's still up in the air. If this verdict holds up, Apple is going to have some sort of antitrust compliance program, but I don't think anyone has a handle on what that might look like yet.




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