In Parting Shot, Government Paints Apple as Amazon Copycat

By Andrew Albanese |  PW - June 19, 2013

On the final day of testimony in Apple’s e-book price-fixing trial, U.S. attorneys looked to poke holes in Apple’s claim to be an innovator in the e-book space. With the director of Apple’s iBookstore in the U.S. Robert MacDonald on the stand, U.S. attorney Lawrence Buterman painted Apple’s iBookstore as a copycat of other digital book efforts—including Amazon’s.

In opening his testimony, MacDonald said he estimated Apple’s share of the U.S. e-book market to be between 17% and 20%, conflicting with Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue’s testimony that Apple had a 25% stake. “Do you disagree with Mr.Cue?” Buterman asked? “I do, in this context,” MacDonald replied.

With time running short for each side to finish presenting their cases, Buterman quickly set out to establish his main points: that Apple did not bring the innovation it claims to the e-book market, and that the Most Favored Nation clause said to be at the heart of the government’s conspiracy theory was never intended to be anything more than a mechanism to get publishers to switch their e-book businesses to the agency model.

In terms of innovation, MacDonald conceded that e-books were already being read on Apple devices, mostly the iPhone and the iPod Touch, well before Apple ever decided to get into the e-book business, via apps—including popular apps from Stanza, and Fictionwise, in addition to Amazon. MacDonald also conceded Apple had no plans to keep e-reader apps from the iPad.

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