On Tuesday, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California got yet another case registered against Apple. The lawsuit is in regards to the fixing of e-book prices. Apple has been targeted by a Seattle Law firm named Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. The company’s managing director, Steve Berman said that the tech giant was using its tablet and smartphone dominance factor to fix prices for the e-books. Apple however was not the lone company against whom the nationwide class-action lawsuit was filed. There were five top publishers too to accompany the tech giant. These publishers were Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan Publishers and HarperCollins Publishers.
Yesterday Berman termed Apple a ‘catalyst’ because Apple was trying to drive up e-book prices and it would be on a large scale as everyone in the industry would be affected with this fixation. The lawsuit has accused Apple as it was planning to get in link with the top publishers to increase the prices of e-books. The publishers were concerned about the tactics adopted by Amazon.com which has discounted the prices of the e-books on a permanent basis. This would result in setting up the expectations of customers at such discounted rates and this would even affect the other devices which act as an e-reader.
Berman commented that Apple was neutralization the popularity earned by Kindle which is an Amazon product. The reason being that upcoming version of iPad would be introduced basically to compete with the status of an e-reader which would make the e-book world quite competitive. Before 2010, Amazon.com had its prices set at $9.99 or less than that for the e-books. In the current market, the top publishers have the prices set at a minimum of $12.99. For example, Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” as e-book costs $12.99 which as compared to the paperback is $ 10 cheaper.
Consumer Watchdog’s consumer advocate, John Simpson was of the view that the lawsuit is right and he was pleased that it has been brought to notice. He displayed his concerns over the tech giant’s monopolizing act which it has been exercising via the Apps Store.
The lawsuit even claims that Amazon has been forced by the alleged publishing houses to change its discounted rates and to let them set the preferred prices for the e-books. If in any case, Amazon wishes to sell these e-books at a price which is less than the prices set by the publishers then, Amazon would be denied access to the specific title. The loss could be huge for the e-book consumers as these top publishers control the market with a share of 85% of fiction and nonfiction titles in the most popular category.
The concern for Apple in this case was that it would not have preferred entering the e-book world with e-books at these discounted rates. According to Berman, the tactics adopted would choke off competition and would not be in the favor of the consumers. It would be an anti-consumer scheme. He even suggested that Apple was trying to kill competition, instead it could compete with players like Amazon. Talking about the price difference, since January 2010, anyone who has bought an e-book via the non-Amazon source has been at a loss of $3 approximately.
Several U.S. state attorney generals along with the European Commission are even looking into the matter. For the charges, the lawsuit can have a real big amount involved as a penalty which can count up to tens of millions of dollars. There was however no response from Apple on the said lawsuit.