Apple, book pubs hit with class-action suit over pricing

Apple and five leading U.S. book publishers have been hit with a class-action lawsuit over eBook pricing. According to a statement on the website of Hagens Berman, the firm that filed the suit, Apple, HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster are accused of colluding to increase the prices on popular eBook titles in order to boost profits and force Amazon to abandon its “pro-consumer discount pricing.” The suit claims that Apple and the publishers are in violation of a variety of federal and state antitrust laws, the Sherman Act, the Cartwright Act, and the Unfair Competition Act, and, if approved, would represent any purchaser of an eBook published by a major publisher after the adoption of the agency model—the pricing model used on the iBookstore. It seeks damages for the purchase od the books, an injunction against pricing eBooks with the agency model and “the forfeiture of the illegal profits received by the defendants as a result of their anticompetitive conduct.” [via TUAW]