Apple fired back after the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday against the tech giant and five publishing houses, alleging they conspired to fix the prices of e-books. An Apple spokesman denied charges the company dictated prices and argued Apple's entry into the e-book market in 2010 actually broke Amazon's monopolistic hold on the publishing industry. Apple's response is an indication it won't be joining the three publishers that settled with the government earlier this week. Full comment is below.
Quotable: "The DOJ's accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we've allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore." --Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr Administration Releases IP Report: CQ's Ambreen Ali reports on the Obama administration's ongoing effort to highlight the importance of intellectual property to the economy, along with the cost of piracy and counterfeiting. The Commerce Department issued its latest report on the importance of IP to private industry at a White House event on Wednesday, which featured Commerce Secretary John Bryson as well as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.The Obama administration has been significantly more aggressive in going after IP violators than previous administrations, but drew the ire of the content industries when the White House came out against a pair of online piracy bills (S 968, HR 3261) earlier this year. The new report doesn't include policy recommendations, but expect a push to increase the penalties for IP violations as a potential olive branch to the content community after SOPA and PIPA were scuttled by opposition from the tech sector and Web community at large.