According to a new report from Giagom, Apple may have to pay $500 million bill from the states and class action lawyers in the ebook pricing suit.
The amount is based on various payments already made by publishers to settle the lawsuit.
Apple was found guilty of colluding with five publishers to fix ebook prices at the launch of the iBookstore by federal judge Denise Cote found Apple guilty.
In a document that the court made public Tuesday, the Texas attorney general provided Judge Cote with a chart showing the amounts that the states have agreed to pay,” Laura Hazard Owen writes for Giagom. “The chart shows that the publishers have paid out over $166 million so far. Earlier this month, a lawyer from Hagens Berman — the class action firm in the case —told my colleague Jeff Roberts that Apple would likely face a liability payment of harm to consumers times three, minus the $166 million already paid out by publishers. On Wednesday, Law360 reported (paywall) the same thing, calculating that if Apple loses its appeal it would face about $490 million in damages. I annotated the chart above with those figures.”
Of course, $500 million is a miniscule amount of money when it comes to Apple. However, the Cupertino-based will probably appealed based on their believe that they did nothing wrong.
