Apple named in e-book price-fixing lawsuit | Digital Media - CNET News:

"Apple and a group of book publishers were accused in a lawsuit today of illegally fixing e-book prices to "boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing."

The lawsuit, which was filed today in U.S. District Court in Northern California, alleges Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster "colluded to increase prices" on popular books. (Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

The lawsuit alleges Apple and the book publishers employed an "agency model" in which publishers set their own e-book prices, rather than the traditional wholesale model in which publishers set a retail price and retailers set their own sales price."