Lawsuit filed against Amazon for violating antitrust law in the US

Amazon the e-commerce giant has been charged with a lawsuit alleging that a deal between the company and book publishers has created higher prices on e-books.

As reported by The Verge, the lawsuit is filed by law firm Hagens Berman in a federal district court in New York. The allegation reads that the publishers pay high commissions and other costs to Amazon, which in turn increases the retail price of e-books sold on the platform. HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan are the five publishers which were part of the deal with Amazon.

Advertisement

The lawsuit further read that Amazon’s price is the price that publishers charge from other retailers as well, preventing other sellers from offering the e-books at lower prices.

The above mentioned five publishers account for 80 percent of books sold in the US. The lawsuit says that this arrangement is a “conspiracy to fix the retail price of e-books,” which it argues is a violation of antitrust law.

Last year, California and Washington state also launched probes into the anti-trust business practices of Amazon and it was already facing antitrust scrutiny from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as from the European Union.