Justice Dept. Settles with Three Publishers, Continues Action Against Apple and Two Others

The complaint states that the companies accomplished their conspiracy by agreeing to stop the longstanding practice of selling eBooks, as they long sold print books, on wholesale to bookstores, and leaving it to the bookstores to set the price at which they would sell the eBooks to consumers. Through their conspiracy, the companies imposed a new model under which the publishers seized eBook pricing authority from all of their retail bookstores and raised prices for eBooks.