In the ninth day of testimony for the case U.S.A. v. Apple, the government entered an email from Steve Jobs to Apple’s senior vice president and supposed ringleader in the conspiracy to raise the price of e-book, Eddy Cue. As soon as this piece of evidence was brought in front of the court, it was basically beaten to death by prosecution.
The email from Jobs read, “I can live with this as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year. If not, I’m not sure we can be competitive.” This email, presented by DOJ attorney, Dan McCuaig, was supposed to make the court see it reflected indifference. However, Keith Moerer, the head of Apple’s iBookstore, simply stated “no,” to the question proposed by McCuaig. It was not until the witness was redirected to Orin Snyder, Apple’s chief counsel. “Are you aware that the email was never sent?” Snyder asked of Moerer. The government immediately objected which was allowed by the judge. This is when things started heading south for the email being proposed as legitimate evidence.
Snyder was aware that there were five different drafts of this email, all of which he presented to the court. Within these emails, it was proven that it was written as a way for Jobs to evolve his thinking around the matter. As this evidence was supposed to be the trials smoking gun, VP Cue took the stand to satisfy Judge Cote by saying “He’s writing that first one, he’s confused about it because he wasn’t clear about wholesale, retail, agency, non-agency. And then he changes it to this, but realizes, you know what, I don’t really know what the right thing is, and that’s why he never sent the e-mails to me… Based on my experience with Steve over the 17 years, I can tell you I’m a hundred percent positive that’s what happened because Steve would never have sent an e-mail if he was not sure about it.”
If this testimony from Cue is accepted by Judge Cote, then Jobs’ email will be irrelevant and it will be stricken from the record.
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