Last year, Apple was hit with an antitrust case from the U.S. Department of Justice over the pricing scheme of e-books in Apple’s iBookstore. Since that time, 11 executives at Apple have already been deposed over the issue, but the Department of Justice is demanding Tim Cook be involved, and they just got their way.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote granted the Justice Department’s request to get Cook to testify on the ebook antitrust case for four hours.
While Apple has maintained that Cook’s testimony would be “cumulative and duplicative,” Judge Cote said that now that Steve Jobs is dead, they deserve to hear from Cook.
“Because of that loss, I think the government is entitled to take testimony from high-level executives within Apple about topics relevant to the government case,” claimed Cote.
The government believes that Cook had relevant information about Apple’s entry into the e-book market, even though he wasn’t CEO at the time. The Justice Department says that Cook probably had conversations with Steve Jobs about e-book pricing before Jobs died in 2011.
Apple is the only defendant left in the antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in April of 2012. Originally, the case included the following publishers: Penguin Group, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Simon & Schuster Inc, and Macmillan. All of the accused publishers have reached a settlement with the Department of Justice.
Source: Reuters
