Apple Must Pay $450 Million as Supreme Court Rejects E-Book Antitrust Appeal
On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s request for an appeal on a ruling that said the company was liable for violating antitrust laws and engaging in price-fixing by letting publishers set prices for e-books sold on Apple’s iBooks platform. Now out of options, Apple will have to pay $400 million to e-book consumers and $50 million to plaintiff’s lawyers, as per a settlement that the company reached in 2014.
In 2012, Apple and five publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan) were sued by the Department of Justice and 33 states’ attorney general offices for conspiring to offer e-books at a higher price than Amazon’s loss-leading $9.99. The publishers all eventually settled for a total of $166 million to states and consumers, but Apple held out and eventually lost a judgement in Manhattan district court.
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