Judge denies Apple's request for temporary suspension of eBook antitrust ruling

Things keep going from bad to worse for Apple in the courts these days. First Judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the company violated antitrust laws and conspired to artificially inflate the prices of e-books across the entire market, and now Judge Cote has today denied Apple’s request for a temporary suspension of her ruling. The Department of Justice is demanding that Apple terminate and renegotiate deals with all publishers currently represented on the iBookstore, while also requiring Apple to allow competitors, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, to link to their online bookstores within their applications. In the decision, Apple is also barred from attempting to influence pricing for eBooks for a length of five years. Apple has begun the process of appealing the court’s ruling and had hoped to avoid the repercussions of the ruling while the appeals process took place.

Apple has long argued for their innocence, and the company has been seeing a growing amount of support from the rest of the industry since the ruling a month ago. Prominent US publishers HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin have all issued a legal brief arguing against the restrictions, claiming that the court’s decision harms not only Apple but also the US publishing market as a whole.

Unfortunately for Apple, it looks like the courts are refusing to budge on their ruling for the time being, and the appeals process could take quite some time before a resolution is reached. There is of course no guarantee that Apple and the eBook publishing world will get the resolution they’re hoping for anyways, so Apple would be best served by reaching peace with the ruling for the time being while the battle to declare their innocence rages on.