A Seattle-based law firm has filed a lawsuit accusing Apple and five major book publishers of fixing eBook prices. The suit, filed by Hagens Berman, alleges that Apple and Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Group Inc, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan Publishers \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colluded\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on eBook prices in order to force Amazon to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fortunately for the publishers, they had a co-conspirator as terrified as they were over Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popularity and pricing structure, and that was Apple,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explained Steve Berman, one of the firm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founding partners. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The law firm released a press release clearly targeting Apple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s methods:<\/p>\n
As a result of the pricing conspiracy, prices of e-books have exploded, jumping as much as 50 percent. When an e-book version of a best-seller costs close to \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or even more than \u00e2\u20ac\u201c its hard-copy counterpart, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take a forensic economist to see that this is evidence of market manipulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The suit additionally noted Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pricing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153threatened to disrupt the publishers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 long-established brick-and-mortar model faster than the publishers were willing to accept.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Seattle-based law firm has filed a lawsuit accusing Apple and five major book publishers of fixing eBook prices. The suit, filed by Hagens Berman, alleges that Apple and Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Group Inc, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan Publishers \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colluded\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on eBook prices in order to force Amazon to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abandon its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tapgamers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}