American Booksellers Association Interviews New General Counsel Partner David Evans

Partner David Evans is featured in an American Booksellers Association interview as the organization’s new legal counsel. David discusses his representative experience, his perspective on current trends in antitrust law, and how antitrust issues in the bookselling industry. David comments on an antitrust suit against Apple and five publishers, alleging they conspired to raise, fix, and stabilize the retail price for newly released and bestselling trade e-books. The publishers settled without admitting wrongdoing; Apple went to trial in 2013 and was found liable for violating antitrust laws. He notes that, This decision will chill not only efforts by the publishers to accomplish change as a group, but will also chill their individual, unilateral behavior. The court basically backed into a price fixing conspiracy because prices went up. Any activity that could result in an increase in price, even the restoration of allocatively efficient windowing, will be looked at skeptically. I think this concern will persist. One of my goals as an advocate for ABA is to get folks to back away from this decision.”

To read the full interview, please click here.