Consumers of electronic books were hit with a sharp increase in prices almost immediately after Apple Inc. shepherded five major books publishers into a corrupt price-fixing scheme in 2010, a lawyer for the U.S. government charged yesterday during opening arguments in an antitrust bench trial.
"This dramatic price increase was no accident, but the anticipated result of an organized scheme orchestrated by Apple," Lawrence Buterman of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division told Southern District Judge Denise Cote (See Profile).
