Michael Bromwich, the court-appointed monitor in the Apple eBook price fixing case will soon resume his duties.
A U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York appointed Michael Bromwich to oversee Apple's eBook pricing activities in October 2013. Bromwich was appointment after Denise Cote, a U.S. District Judge, ruled that Apple played an important role in colluding with publishers to fix prices for eBooks and undercut Amazon. The court ruling barred Apple from "entering into anti-competitive contracts with ebook publishers."
However, tension between the monitor and Apple started soon after Bromwich's appointment. Bromwich filed a document with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York accusing Apple of not cooperating with the investigations. The document filed by Bromwich says that Apple refused interviews with the company's top executives on several occasions and did not provide documents relevant to the investigation in a timely and satisfactory manner.
On the other hand, Apple accused Bromwich of taking advantage of the situation and charging exorbitant fees for his service. The iPhone maker also claims that Bromwich asked for "voluminous historical documents" and Apple did provide over 300 pages of information as required by him.
Apple also made a request to the court that Bromwich's powers should be limited and appealed whether Bromwich's appointment was acceptable. Following Apple's appeal, Bromwich's investigations were temporarily halted.
On Monday, February 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected Apple's appeal to put Bromwich's duties on hold, while the company seeks an appeal to remove him completely.
"We are pleased with the court's decision," said Gina Talamona, a U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman. "Today's ruling makes abundantly clear that Apple must now cooperate with the court-appointed monitor. The appellate court's ruling reaffirms the department's and district court's decision that a monitor is necessary to oversee Apple's antitrust compliance policies, procedures and training to help ensure that Apple does not engage in future price fixing and that US consumers never have to pay the price of their illegal conduct again."
However, the court ruling also defined Bromwich's duties and responsibilities in the investigations. The appeals court says that Bromwich is supposed to investigate Apple's compliance with anti-trust policies and not supposed to investigate the company's employees' compliance with antitrust laws.
The court order also says that the monitor is empowered to demand only documents, which are relevant to his authorized responsibility and request interviews with Apple directors, officers and employees "only on subjects relevant to that responsibility."
