Apple Fights Back in Antitrust Case Over E-Book Prices

Don’t mess with the legacy of Steve Jobs. That is one of several factors that seem to be motivating Apple’s vigorous defense against a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of conspiring with five of the largest publishing houses to fix prices on electronic books, according to people close to the case.

Unlike the five publishers, all of which have settled the case, filed in April 2012, Apple is aggressively disputing the government’s assertions that Apple and the publishers wanted to force Amazon, which controlled 90 percent of the e-book market before Apple entered it, to raise its prices, according to court papers filed this week. A trial is scheduled to begin June 3 in Federal District Court in New York. Among other defenses, Apple says that both Amazon and the publishing companies were already contemplating a move to a different pricing model in 2009, before Apple entered the e-book business. Apple cites one Amazon executive who referred in an e-mail to the idea that Amazon got publishers to accept what it wanted all along as “Jedi mind tricks.”