Apple and a group of book publishers have been accused of illegally fixing e-book prices to "boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing".
A lawsuit (PDF), filed on Tuesday in US District Court in Northern California, alleges Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster "colluded to increase prices" on popular books. (Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS. ZDNet UK is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)
The lawsuit alleges Apple and the book publishers employed an "agency model" in which publishers set their own e-book prices, rather than the traditional wholesale model in which publishers set a retail price and retailers set their own sales price.
The plaintiffs, listed in the lawsuit as Anthony Petru of Oakland, California, and Marcus Mathis of Natchez, Mississippi, purchased at least one e-book title for $9.99 (£6.14), allegedly paying higher prices as a result of the agency model.
For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Apple named in e-book price-fixing lawsuit on CNET News.
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