Apple senior executive Eddy Cue has defended the company in the e-book price-fixing trial by saying that it did not fix prices.
Eddy Cue was cited by Reuter as testifying before the federal court, "I didn’t raise prices."
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and 15 US states sued Apple and other major book publishers for alleged price-fixing of electronic books.
The DOJ has claimed that Apple conspired with publishers to increase e-book prices with regards to online retailer Amazon’s pricing of $9.99 for newly launched and best selling e-books.
Cue was testified in a US federal court about meetings he had in 2009 with chief executives of major publishing firms.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Cue told the court that the company acted in the best interest of consumers, including providing the public a better technology interface and e-books that were found nowhere else at the time.
The DOJ has alleged that agency model increased the prices of many best-selling e-books to $12.99 or $14.99 even though the publishers and Apple denied the charges.
Earlier this month, a top executive at Amazon said that publishers gave the company an ultimatum in 2010 over e-book pricing.
All five publishers involved in the lawsuit, Hachette Book, HarperCollins Publishers, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Publishers, and Penguin Group, have settled with the DOJ.
