Injunction junction, what’s your function?

Andrew Albanese reports at Publishers Weekly that the Department of Justice and Apple will be back in Judge Cote’s courtroom on August 27 to discuss what kind of injunction the judge will issue against Apple in the penalty phase of the e-book trial. Both parties will be exchanging letters on the issue, which should be submitted by August 23rd.

What kind of injunction will it be? Judge Cote has suggested that she has fairly broad discretion in how far the injunction went, but she doesn’t want to stifle innovation or regulate the app store if she doesn’t have to. And she also has to be thinking about what will stand up on appeal. If she goes too far, it gives Apple more ammunition. But so far she’s proven to be pretty canny about that sort of thing, not giving Apple and the publishers what they wanted but not going as far as the Department of Justice wanted either.

It’s also worth remembering just how unrepentant Apple and the publishers are coming off. If the judge thinks there’s a real likelihood they’ll try something like that again, she could get pretty creative when it comes to ways to stop them. And since she’s not going to stay enforcement pending the appeal, whatever she decides could take effect right away.

Whatever happens, stay tuned for the next juicy bit of Apple/publisher schadenfreude. We should see it in just about two weeks.

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