{"id":1665359,"date":"2022-09-29T18:50:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T22:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1665359"},"modified":"2022-09-29T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T22:50:50","slug":"amazon-major-publishers-win-dismissal-of-antitrust-lawsuits-over-book-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/amazon-major-publishers-win-dismissal-of-antitrust-lawsuits-over-book-pricing\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon, major publishers win dismissal of antitrust lawsuits over book pricing"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Famazon-major-publishers-win-dismissal-of-antitrust-lawsuits-over-book-pricing%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1665359&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) \u2013     A federal judge on Thursday dismissed two antitrust lawsuits accusing Amazon.com Inc and five large publishers of illegally conspiring to fix U.S. prices of electronic and traditional books, causing consumers and bookstores to pay more.<\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1663871513696-art-1\">\n<\/div>\n<p>U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan accepted a magistrate judge\u2019s recommendations to end both cases against Amazon, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing Group, Penguin Random House and Simon &#038; Schuster.<\/p>\n<p>Consumers accused the defendants of signing agreements that let the publishers inflate e-book prices by locking in a 30% \u201cagency\u201d fee for Amazon on each sale, and guaranteeing that Amazon\u2019s prices would not be undercut.<\/p>\n<p>Retail booksellers, meanwhile, alleged that Amazon had been awarded a \u201cdiscriminatory discount\u201d on hardbacks, paperbacks and mass-produced books, forcing them to pay higher wholesale prices to the publishers and depressing book sales.<\/p>\n<p>According to the plaintiffs, Amazon commands 90% of retail e-book sales and 50% of print trade book sales, while the publishers account for 80% of both kinds of books.<\/p>\n<p>But in two opinions totaling 113 pages, U.S. Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo recommended last month that both lawsuits be dismissed, citing a lack of evidence of collusion.<\/p>\n<p>She found it \u201ctelling\u201d in the e-book case that the consumers offered \u201cno plausible explanation for why the publishers would have been motivated to participate in a conspiracy that further entrenched Amazon\u2019s dominance as an e-book retailer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Woods adopted Figueredo\u2019s reasoning in full. The lawsuits were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs can try amending their complaints.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Amazon had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n<p>The trade book case was led by Bookends &#038; Beginnings, a bookseller in Evanston, Illinois.<\/p>\n<p>The cases are In re Amazon.com Inc e-Book Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 21-00351; and Bookends &#038; Beginnings LLC v Amazon.com Inc et al in the same court, No. 21-02584.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/uncategorized\/amazon-major-publishers-win\/attachment\/file-photo-an-amazon-sign-at-the-companys-logistics-centre-2\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI8S194-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI8S194-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) \u2013 A federal judge on Thursday dismissed two antitrust lawsuits accusing Amazon.com Inc and five large publishers of illegally conspiring to fix U.S. prices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1665359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}