Posted on January 15, 2021 at 9:44 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
2021 isn’t off to the best start for Amazon — the online retail giant is now facing two lawsuits.
The first one was made public Wednesday; in it, the state of Connecticut is investigating Amazon for “potentially anticompetitive terms in their e-book distribution agreements with certain publishers,” Attorney General William Tong said in a statement to Reuters.
The second one — a class-action lawsuit alleging price-fixing between Amazon and the Big Five publishers — was filed in New York district court on Thursday.
The Guardian reports that Hagens Berman, who successfully sued Apple and the Big Five publishers over similar claims ten years ago, is pursuing this most recent case.
In part, the lawsuit alleges that “Amazon’s agreement with its Co-conspirators is an unreasonable restraint of trade that prevents competitive pricing and causes Plaintiffs and other consumers to overpay when they purchase ebooks from the Big Five through an ebook retailer that competes with Amazon.”
Amazon declined to comment on both lawsuits.
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Categories: Today in Books