United States v. Apple, Inc.

To compete with Amazon's $9.99 e-book pricing, Apple (defendant) negotiated identical agency-pricing contracts (with a most-favored-nation clause) with the "Big Six" publishers, assuring each that the others were joining on the same terms and coordinating a unified push against Amazon's pricing; once most publishers signed, they collectively pressured Amazon into adopting agency pricing, after which e-book prices rose significantly and stayed elevated. The government and states (plaintiffs) sued, the publishers settled, and Apple went to trial, where the court found it had organized horizontal price fixing, a per se Sherman Act violation; Apple appealed.