One of the most renowned and respected companies all over the world is Apple Inc. This American multinational corporation is the manufacturer of the infamous iPhone that set off the trend of smartphones. Based in Cupertino, California, the company is the second largest information technology companies and the third largest mobile phone vendor. In the US, Apple is one of the most admired companies, although it does seem to be losing its shine. This is because the company was recently involved in a scandal. According to the reports, the iPhone maker had conspired with Apple e-book publishers and raised the prices of books.

However, this secret was unearthed and the company’s actions were heavily criticized because it seems to be exploiting its loyal customers. The California based firm will be returning to court on Friday for settling this matter and fight with government lawyers over the proposed restrictions on the e-book business of the company. Now it seems that the iPhone manufacturer is actually getting a belated help from some of the co-conspirators who were in on the whole business. It was ruled by a judge this summer that Apple Inc. had been conspiring with a total of five publishers to boost the prices of the e-books.

Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House and Lagardere’s Hachette are the renowned five publishers who are allegedly part of the conspiracy. All of them had already made a settlement and had made an agreement to give around $164 million to customers who may have overpaid for the books they had purchased. However, now a motion has been jointly filed by these five publishers and they are objecting to the remedies that have been proposed by the government in this case. In essence, what the publishers want to say is that the additional limits that are being proposed for imposing on Apple would end up publishing them a second time.

According to the motion filed by the publishers, Apple’s pricing behavior will not be limited by the provisions at all. Instead, the settling defendants are being punished in the guise of punishing Apple because they are using an agency model and thus prohibiting agreements with the iPhone maker. It was last year that an antitrust lawsuit had been filed against Apple and the five publishers by the Justice Department. Once the judge had given the ruling, a list of proposed remedies had been submitted by the lawyers of the Justice Department.

These remedies include the appointment of an antitrust monitor, terminating the current contracts between the publishers and Apple and also blocking future contracts for several years. These remedies also included requiring Apple to allow competitors to post links of their own e-books in their applications. Earlier, the American multinational had filed its own rebuttal and had said that the measures recommended were punitive and draconian to be exact. Therefore, on Friday in the US District Court of New York, a hearing has been rescheduled regarding the proposed remedies and the action that will be taken.

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