The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review an appeals court’s original decision that Apple had conspired with five different book publishers to raise the prices of digital books. This means they are still on the line to pay out $450 million as part of the settlement.
“If a new firm’s entry disrupts a monopoly and creates long-term competition, that is to be lauded, whether the previous prices were artificially high or artificially low,” the brief said.
The appeals court did not aggree. “Competition is not served by permitting a market entrant to eliminate price competition as a condition of entry, and it is cold comfort to consumers that they gained a new e-book retailer at the expense of passing control over all e-book prices to a cartel of book publishers,” Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote for the majority.
