price-fixing

Apple named in e-book price-fixing lawsuit

Apple and a group of book publishers were accused in a lawsuit today of illegally fixing e-book prices to "boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing."

The lawsuit (PDF), which was filed today in U.S. District Court in Northern California, alleges Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster "colluded to increase prices" on popular books. (Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

The lawsuit alleges Apple and the book publishers employed … Read more

Report: Oracle sues Micron over chip pricing

Oracle has sued Micron Technology, alleging the chipmaker overcharged Sun Microsystems for memory chips, according to a report.

Micron and other manufacturers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) "artificially inflated" the price of chips, according to an Oracle complaint filed Friday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., Bloomberg reported.

The Oracle suit is based on DRAM sales made to Sun. Oracle acquired Sun in January.

While other companies, such as Hynix Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics, are cited as "co-conspirators," they're not named as defendants.

The origin of the case goes back to a 2002 … Read more

AT&T and Verizon deny price-fixing accusations

Executives from the nation's largest phone companies went to Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend themselves against allegations that they've been fixing prices on text messaging.

Executives from AT&T and Verizon Communications testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, saying their companies have not been involved in a conspiracy to hike text messaging rates. And they argued that competition is alive and well in the wireless market.

The hearing was called in response to a letter sent in September from Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) to the four major U.S. operators--Verizon, AT&… Read more

Hitachi exec indicted in LCD price-fixing scheme

Hitachi executive Sakae Someya was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in San Francisco for his role in a conspiracy to fix the prices of LCD screens.

Someya is accused of conspiring with others in the LCD display business "to suppress and eliminate competition" by fixing the price of the panels sold to Dell for notebook PCs. Someya is accused of participating in the scheme between January 2001 through December 2004. That would be a violation of the Sherman Act, which can result in a $1 million fine and a 10-year prison sentence.

Someya's indictment brings … Read more

Visions of an online music cartel?

U.S. law often comes down hard on price fixing. That's why a magazine story in October about efforts to create a music subscription site potentially backed by the top four music labels may have sounded alarms in Washington.

Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have received requests for information from the U.S. Department of Justice about a proposed music site called Total Music. The DOJ interest comes after an October BusinessWeek story that said Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, pitched an idea for a subscription site to at least two of his three main competitors, … Read more