Case study example
United States v. Apple Inc.: Case Study
- Subject
- Law
- Type
- Case study
- Citation style
- APA 6
- Length
- 9 pages
About this sample
The paper examines the legal dispute United States of America v. Apple Inc., et al., focusing on how publishers and Amazon priced e-books before Apple signed agency agreements with the publishers. It then sets out the procedural issue of whether those agreements should be treated as automatically illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act or assessed under the rule of reason. It is organised as a case study with the headings Essential Facts and Issue.
- E-book pricing and the wholesale model
- Apple agency agreements with publishers
- Amazon's pricing strategy and Kindle e-readers
- Sherman Antitrust Act
- Per se illegality versus the rule of reason
How it opens
The legal issue name of the case is United States of America v. Apple Inc., et al., 12 Civ. 2862 (DLC)
Essential Facts
The largest publishers of general readership books comprise Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, Random House, and HarperCollins. These six are renowned for publishing popular non-fiction and fiction books that incorporate 90% of New York Times bestsellers (Fung, 2013). For ten years, these publishers conducted their activities following a moderately reliable business model. If there were a new book set for public release, they would trade hardcover versions to dealers at a wholesale price and advocate merchandising to consumers at a list price (publisher's recommended retail price). When the hardcover copy had a year on the shelf, the publishers produced a paperback version at reduced wholesale and list prices. Theoretically, passionate book lovers paid the increased hardcover value to get a book at its release, while casual readers awaited the paperback copy.
At the end of the ten years, Amazon was retailing eBooks at a low price of $9.99 a piece, an inexpensive cost, but not for the publishers that charged more (Fung, 2013). Although Amazon was reducing its revenues on eBook sales, it did not view this as a concern to their company. This was because their end objective was to ensure that consumers purchase their Kindle e-readers (Fung, 2013). The six big publishers did not anticipate that Amazon would retail their books at a loss. Still, they could not do anything about that since they had agreements with the corporation.
The opening section, transcribed from the PDF. The full paper continues below.
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Using an example well
Read it for how the paper is built, not for wording to reuse: how the introduction frames the question, how each paragraph moves from a claim to evidence, and how sources are cited in APA 6. Submitting any part of it as your own work would be plagiarism, and it is written for a different brief than yours.
Writing one yourself? Read the guide How to write an essay and the APA format guide.