Nearly two years ago, Apple agreed to pay a settlement worth $450 million for a lawsuit that accused the company of being in conspiracy with publishers in a price fixing scheme for e-books.
The amount would be divided into $400 million for consumers and $50 million in legal and state fees. Despite Apple's decision to pay the settlement, it maintains that it is not guilty of the allegations against the company.
Further appeals of Apple on the lawsuit have been rejected, with the latest one being the Supreme Court's denial in March of this year. The High Court did not issue a comment upon its refusal of Apple's appeal.
The company is now starting to push out the payments to affected consumers. The customers who should expect either digital credits to be added to their accounts or checks mailed to them are those who bought e-books from publishers Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin within the timeframe of April 1, 2010 to May 21, 2012. While most of the purchases were made through Amazon, some were made through other digital outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple itself.
The settlement will credit customers with $6.93 for each e-book that they purchased of a New York Times bestseller, and $1.57 each for other e-books.
For Amazon customers, the online retail giant has uploaded a dedicated page on its website regarding the settlement. According to Amazon, eligible customers are not required to do anything to be able to receive their credits, with the amount already added to their digital accounts. Payments made using the credits will appear as a gift card upon the checkout of purchased items, with the credits available to be used until June 24 next year.
The e-book industry placed publishers on a precarious position upon its launch, as there were concerns that the sales of digital books would cut into the sales of traditional paperback books. Publishers became obsessed with being able to control the prices of e-books that they broke antitrust laws, as exemplified by Apple's case.
The lawsuit filed against Apple accused the company and the publishers of preventing other sellers of e-books from competing in terms of price. The price fixing scheme increased the cost of some e-books to as high as $12.99 to $14.99, compared to the $9.99 price when the e-book is bought in Amazon.
The lawsuit was initially filed by two individuals, with the Department of Justice and the attorneys general of several states eventually joining the legal action.
