Amazon and the Big Five publishers were accused Thursday of colluding to drive up e-book prices. Hagens Berman, the Seattle law firm that filed the lawsuit, successfully sued Apple and the Big Five for the same crime 10 years ago.
Amazon signed anti-competitive pricing agreements with Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster in 2015, allowing those publishing merchants to raise prices by as much as 30 percent, according to comprehensive foreign media reports.
According to the report, Berman & Associates filed a lawsuit Thursday in New York District Court on behalf of consumers in several states, alleging that Amazon and other publishers used the “most favored nation” (MFN) clause to enter into price-restrictive agreements that make consumers pay more for e-books purchased on platforms other than Amazon’s website.
The lawsuit claims that approximately 90 percent of all e-books sold in the United States are sold by Amazon and that “Amazon’s agreement with the conspirators is an unreasonable restraint of trade that prevents competitive pricing.” The lawsuit also seeks compensation for consumers, as well as forcing Amazon and the publisher to abandon the practice.
Steve Berman, the managing partner who filed the lawsuit, said, “Amazon has acted shockingly by trying to eliminate competition in the marketplace over and over again.”
E-book prices reportedly fell in 2013 and 2014 after Apple and major publishers were successfully sued for colluding to set e-book prices, but they rose again in 2015 after Amazon renegotiated. The EU has said that this practice “may make it more difficult for other e-book platforms to innovate” and reached an agreement with Amazon in 2015 to ban the practice for five years, but only within the EU.
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