Apple Could End Up Paying $500M In E-Book Pricing Suit

Based on the amounts that the settling publishers have already paid out in the e-book price fixing class action suit, Apple is looking to pay up to $500 million in damages to the states and class action lawyers, GigaOM reports.

The five publishers i.e Hachette, Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, who Apple has been found guilty of colluding with, have already settled and paid damages to the states. In a document that the court made public Tuesday, the Texas attorney general provided Judge Cote with a chart showing the amounts that the states have agreed to pay (shown above). The chart shows that the publishers have paid out over $166 million so far.

“Earlier this month, a lawyer from Hagens Berman — the class action firm in the case — told my colleague Jeff Roberts that Apple would likely face a liability payment of harm to consumers times three, minus the $166 million already paid out by publishers. On Wednesday, Law360 reported (paywall) the same thing, calculating that if Apple loses its appeal it would face about $490 million in damages. I annotated the chart above with those figures”.

Looking at the percentages, the plaintiffs do appear to have some sort of good strategy in terms of settlements.