The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has found Apple guilty of violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act, by conspiring to raise e-book prices and end e-book retailers’ freedom to compete on price.
The court agreed with the Justice Department and 33 state attorneys general that senior Apple executives orchestrated a conspiracy with five major publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster – to raise e-book prices.
Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer: As the department’s litigation team established at trial, Apple executives hoped to ensure that its e-book business would be free from retail price competition, causing consumers throughout the country to pay higher prices for many e-books.
The evidence showed that the prices of the conspiring publishers’ e-books increased by an average of 18 percent as a result of the collusive effort led by Apple, said the Department of Justice in a statement.
Background
On April 11, 2012, the department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Apple, Hachette Book Group (USA), HarperCollins Publishers, Holtzbrinck Publishers, which does business as Macmillan, Penguin Group (USA) and Simon & Schuster, for conspiring to end e-book retailers’ freedom to compete on price by taking control of pricing from e-book retailers and substantially increasing the prices that consumers paid for e-books.
At the same time that it filed the lawsuit, the department reached settlements with three of the publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. Those settlements were approved by the court in September 2012. The department settled with Penguin on Dec. 18, 2012, and with Macmillan on Feb. 8, 2013. The Penguin settlement was approved by the court in May 2013. Final approval of the Macmillan settlement is pending before the court.
Under the settlements, each publisher was required to terminate agreements that prevented e-book retailers from lowering the prices at which they sell e-books to consumers and to allow for retail price competition in renegotiated e-book distribution agreements.
The department’s trial against Apple, which was overseen by Judge Denise Cote, began on June 3, 2013. The trial lasted for three weeks, with closing arguments taking place on June 20, 2013. The court has not yet scheduled a hearing to address the parties’ proposed remedies.