Apple’s appeal to dismiss a lawsuit that accused the iPad maker of alleged e-book price fixing conspiracy was denied by a federal judge on Tuesday. The damages portion of the trial will begin on July 14.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s ruling cleared the way for attorneys general in 33 states and territories to proceed along with other consumer attorneys to seek as much as $840 million in damages for “injury inflicted on their economies and their citizens.”
“Apple appears on the one hand to concede that the states have standing to seek injunctive relief against Apple, but to contest that they have standing to seek damages arising from the same conduct by Apple,” Cote wrote. “Apple fails to explain how this can be so.”
Earlier in April 2012, Apple, along with five of the six largest book publishers in the US, was sued by the Justice Department, accusing them of involving in an alleged e-book price fixing conspiracy.
After a non-jury trial in July, Cote concluded that Apple from 2009 to 2010 conspired with publishers to fix the prices of e-books to impede competitors such as Amazon.com Inc.
The State attorney Generals previously sought $280 million in damages, but in January they appealed that the damages amount should be tripled as the US had already “conclusively proven” that Apple was involved in the conspiracy.
The publishers, including Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group Inc, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Penguin Group (USA) Inc, CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster Inc and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH’s Macmillan, had previously agreed to pay more than $166 million to settle related antitrust charges.
