Last year the Department of Justice (DoJ) initiated a anti-trust case against Apple and five other major book publishing houses, Penguin Group, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Simon & Schuster Inc, and Macmillan, in a price fixing case to dethrone Amazon of its domination in ebook market. The D0J already completed its round of discussion with all the book publishers apart from Apple and reached a settlement. Right now D0J has ordered for Tim Cook to testify in the case proving earlier rumours right.
The DoJ has already got 11 prime employees from Apple who were involved in the iBooks project to testify but before coming to a conclusion the D0J wants the now CEO, Tim Cook, to justify as well. The DoJ feels that Tim Cook might be holding potential information that will help them in taking a decision but Tim Cook’s judge argues that he was not involved much in the iBooks project and most information was known to Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs only.
But US district court Jude Cote has something else to say
“Because of that loss, I think the government is entitled to take testimony from high-level executives within Apple about topics relevant to the government case,” as well as to counter Apple’s defense arguments, she said.
The next trial is scheduled for June which if proved against Apple might lead to blocking Apple from engaging in similar conducts further.