Joshua Abbott, Executive Director of the Center for Law, Science & Innovation, was a recent guest on

Joshua Abbott

a financial radio talk program, where he discussed e-book antitrust litigation that has been filed by the government against Apple Inc.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Apple and five book publishers. In April, the DOJ announced it had reached a settlement with three of the largest publishers. The suit alleges Apple and the publishers conspired to end e-book retailers’ freedom to compete on price, take control of pricing from e-book retailers and substantially increase the prices that consumers pay for e-books.

Abbott spoke about the lawsuit on June 1 on radio station KLAV-AM’s “Financial Fridays,” a program sponsored by Piercy Bowler Taylor & Kern, a CPA firm based in Las Vegas.

“The government has a pretty serious case,” Abbott said. “The government is saying Apple, when it came out with the iPad, was the center of kind of a conspiracy it put together with the publishers to raise the prices of e-books.

“Apple’s response, of course, is that this is absurd, it was just doing regular business and entered into contracts with individual publishers. It (claims it) didn’t know anything about a conspiracy,” he said.

To listen to the program, click here.