The company was found guilty of conspiring with five major book publishers to raise the price of e-books with the launch of the iPad in 2010.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote made the ruling, claiming that the plaintiffs had "more than met their burden" to be approved as a group. "This is a paradigmatic antitrust class action," wrote Cote in her ruling, with a trial set for later this year to determine monetary damages. Apple will likely have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to millions of consumers affected. 33 states will also be part of the class action suit on behalf of their consumers, with all the plaintiffs seeking over $800 million in damages from Apple.
As part of the price-fixing conspiracy, all the publishers settled and paid millions in fines and damages, but Apple took it to court before losing last summer to the U.S. Department of Justice. At the time, Amazon had a monopoly on the e-book market, and they began to charge whatever price they saw fit, sometimes offering the books for less than retail to sell more Kindle hardware. When Apple came around, they conspired with the publishers to change the pricing scheme, setting a strong floor for book prices and making it much more expensive for consumers.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 30 Mar 2014 13:10
