Amazon ebook anticompetition lawsuit to proceed

In the US, a federal judge has formally adopted a magistrate judge’s recommendation that a consumer class action against Amazon for anticompetitive conduct in relation to the ebook market be allowed to proceed, reports Publishers Weekly (PW).

However, the court has ‘officially dismissed all claims against the Big Five publishers that were initially accused of being co-conspirators with Amazon in a bid to fix ebook prices,’ writes PW.

In presiding district court judge Gregory Woods’ written opinion, some of the plaintiffs’ claims were rejected, but two claims were recommended to be allowed to proceed against Amazon, in relation to monopolisation and attempted monopolisation.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the lawsuit accusing Amazon and the Big Five of colluding to fix ebook prices was filed in January 2021 in the Southern District of New York by Hagens Berman, the law firm that successfully sued Apple and major publishers for colluding to fix ebook prices in 2011. In September 2022, a New York federal judge dismissed the price-fixing claims, following a magistrate’s recommendation that the case be dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

The lawsuit was then amended and re-filed in federal court in November 2022. The amended complaint accused Amazon and Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House of a hub-and-spoke agreement to eliminate price competition from the ebook market, and alleged Amazon is a monopoly that has used its market dominance to ‘coerce’ publishers into ‘entering into contractual provisions that foreclose competition on price or product availability’.

Category: International news News