Antitrust suit against Amazon to continue
By Paul Biba
An alert reader pointed me to this blog on the Amazon Booksurge antitrust lawsuit. This is a suit, in Federal court in Maine, against Amazon and Booksurge alleging that they are engaging in illegal tying activity (which violates the Sherman Act) by forcing POD publishers, in this case the plaintiff, Booklocker.com, to use Booksurge if they want to sell their books directly.
As a normal part of the procedure in a lawsuit, Amazon brought a motion to dismiss the suit, and this motion was just denied by the judge. This means that the suit can now continue and should move on to the discovery stage. If no protective order is entered then we might find out a bit more about Amazon’s business practices as Amazon is forced to produce its corporate documents. Stay tuned!
You can find out more about the suit, and keep up on its progress, at the plaintiff’s blog.
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