The Texas Attorney General and the Connecticut Attorney General have mounted a state-based lawsuit against publishers and Apple, following in the footsteps of the eBook pricing lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice announced this week. Follow this PDF link to see the state’s court papers.
HarperCollins and Hachette have already settled with the state prosecutors, but the lawsuit includes Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Apple. A long list of states have joined the suit: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia.
Here’s more from the Texas Attorney General’s office: “According to the States’ enforcement action, the coordinated agreement to fix prices resulted in e-book customers paying more than $100 million in overcharges. The States’ antitrust action seeks injunctive relief to reverse the effects of the defendants’ anti-competitive conduct as well as damages for customers who paid artificially inflated prices for e-books.”