The chairman of RoyaltyShare Inc., Bob Kohn, is also an expert in the area of music licensing laws. He has filed a brief totaling five pages that asks for a judge to reject a settlement in a case involving price-fixing of e-books. The brief is a cartoon. Kohn is not associated with the lawsuit, but is instead an e-book consumer. He has asked that U.S. District Judge Denise Cote to file a friend-of-the-court brief that opposes the lawsuit against Apple Inc. from the Justice Department.
Kohn decided to file a five-page brief in cartoon style because Cote told him he had only five pages for the brief and not the traditional 25-page prose-only style brief.
“The high court said that collusive conduct is OK under rule of reason where there is a countervailing pro-competitive virtue,” Kohn says to his daughter in the cartoon. His daughter is a grad student at Harvard. The panels of the cartoon have legal rulings and court paper citations in them. The brief begins with a page of authorities for the arguments presented by Kohn.
“I’m hopeful I can have an impact on the court’s thinking in a positive way,” said Kohn.
Apple, along with five publishers, were sued by the Justice Department back in April. The lawsuit alleged that they colluded to fix prices for the e-books. The case was settled by three of the publishing companies.
