Apple and other major book publishers are being sued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and 15 US states for alleged price-fixing of electronic books.
The department has been investigating several publishers since this week over the pricing of e-books, Reuters reported.
Other five book publishers include CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, Pearson and Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck and Penguin.
Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster have already settled the dispute with the department.
US Justice Department’s antitrust division head Sharis A Pozen said the settlement "will begin to undo the harm caused by the companies’ anticompetitive conduct, and will restore price competition so that consumers can pay lower prices for their e-books".
The department has served Apple with a lawsuit as it is not involved in negotiations over a potential settlement to avoid the suit unlike other publishers.
The Justice department will investigate whether Apple settled with major publishers to move from the wholesale method used by Amazon to an agency model where publishers would sell e-books at their own set prices, nearly two years ago when its iPad tablet computer was launched.
Agency model increased the prices of many best-selling e-books to $12.99 or $14.99, according to the suit, though the publishers and Apple denied the charges.
In a wholesale method, publishers set a specific price for e-books and retailers can charge consumers however much they wished.
A negotiated settlement between the Justice Department and some publishers is expected as soon as this week, though the discussions are not public.
Macmillan and Penguin Group USA, which were also named in the suit, did not settle their suits and according to reports are preparing also preparing to fight the the suit in court.
