US says Apple, publisher colluded to fix book prices

The US sued Apple and a group of book publishers in 2012, claiming they conspired to raise prices for electronic books in violation of US antitrust law

Apple Inc engaged in a horizontal price-fixing scheme with some of America's largest publishers to violate antitrust laws by working "to strip retailers of pricing authority," the US Justice Department said in a court filing.

The department's Antitrust Division filed papers for a trial set to begin June 3 in federal court in Manhattan that included excerpts of e-mails and depositions of Apple executives including the company's late founder, Steve Jobs, and Senior Vice-President Eddy Cue and publishing executives.

In an April 26 memo made public on Tuesday, the US cited evidence in its case such as an e-mail sent by Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corp, the parent company of the HarperCollins book division.

"Apple's iTunes Store and App Store have over 120 million customers with credit cards on file and have downloaded over 12 billion products," Jobs, who died in October 2011, said in an undated e-mail. "This is the type of online assets that will be required to scale the e-book business into something that matters to the publishers."

The US sued Apple and a group of book publishers in 2012, claiming they conspired to raise prices for electronic books in violation of US antitrust law.

"Apple did not conspire to fix e-book pricing," Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for the Cupertino, California-based company said in an e-mail on Tuesday. "We helped transform the e-book market with the introduction of the iBookstore in 2010 bringing consumers an expanded selection of e-books and delivering innovative new features. The market has been thriving and innovating since Apple's entry and we look forward to going to trial to defend ourselves."