Apple guilty of price-fixing conspiracy

A US judge has found Apple guilty of conspiring to raise e-book prices.

US district judge, Denise Cote, ruled that Apple had played a central role in a conspiracy with several US book publishers to fix e-book prices.

After the ruling, Apple said it “did not conspire to fix e-book pricing” and “will continue to fight against these false accusations”.

Apple said it will appeal the judge’s verdict.

“The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy,” Cote said.

“Without Apple’s orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,” she said.

Damages will be determined at a hearing later down the line.

According to the US Department of Justice, the conspiracy intended to challenge Amazon’s dominance in the e-book market.

“With a full appreciation of each other’s interests, Apple and the publisher defendants agreed to work together to eliminate retail price competition in the e-book market and raise the price of e-books above $9.99,” Cote said.

“On a fairly regular basis, roughly once a quarter, the CEOs of the publishers held dinners in the private dining rooms of New York restaurants, without counsel or assistants present, in order to discuss the common challenges they faced, including most prominently Amazon’s pricing policies,” she said.

“The evidence is overwhelming that Apple knew of the unlawful aims of the conspiracy and joined that conspiracy with the specific intent to help it succeed,” she said.