Cartoon Brief

I stumbled across this great (and true) story the other day about Bob Kohn and the "Cartoon Brief". Kohn is the chairman of a company called RoyaltyShare Inc and a expert in electronic licencing law. A couple of months ago he asked to provide the court with submissions as an amicus curiae ("friend of the court" for those without a legal/latin background) in the matter of United States of America v Apple; an anti-trust case brought by the Department of Justice against Apple and five other publishers who allegedly colluded to set prices for e-books. The judge (District Court Judge Cote) gave him leave, but limited his submissions to 5 pages. Kohn, who had intended to file a detailed 25 page brief, instead submitted a simplified version of his argument... in the form of a cartoon. 

The drawings are pretty good - and his argument is quite persuasive. Basically he is saying that one-off market collusion is not always against consumer's interests, and that you must weigh the bad effects of the collusion against the pro-competitive benefits of the agreement. I don't know much about competition law (especially US anti-trust law), but it sounds right to me. 

I wonder if cartoon submissions would work before any Supreme Court judges in NSW? They certainly do seem to hate long submissions...

You can find the whole brief here at the American Bar Association Journal website: http://www.abajournal.com/files/AppleAmicusBrief.pdf