Apple In Court Over Ebook Price Fixing The US government and Apple Inc are set to face off in court over allegations the company conspired with book publishers to make consumers pay more for electronic books. The trial stems from an anti-trust lawsuit brought last year by the Justice Department, which accused Apple of helping hatch the scheme at a meeting with publishers in 2009 as it prepared to launch the iPad. Its purpose was to force Amazon.com - the marketer of Kindle ebook readers - to raise the $9.99 price it had set for the most popular ebook titles because that was substantially below their hardcover prices, the government says. In court papers, it wrote: "Apple wanted to sell ebooks to the public, but did not want to compete against the low prices Amazon was setting. Apple knew that the major publishers also disliked Amazon's low prices and saw Apple's potential entry as a pathway to higher retail prices industry-wide. The Justice Department accuses the conspirators of agreeing that instead of selling books to retailers and letting them decide what price to charge readers, the publishers would convert the retailers into "agents" who were restricted from lowering the publisher-set retail price. The arrangement guaranteed Apple a 30% commission on each ebook it sold. The government has alleged that the scheme cost consumers tens of millions of dollars by adding as much as $5 to the price of each ebook. It also argues part of the proof is Steve Jobs' own account of the arrangement. The late Apple chief executive "conceded the price-fixing conspiracy when, the day after publicly announcing Apple's forthcoming iBookstore, he explained to his authorised biographer that Apple had told the publishers 'we'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway,'" the government says in court papers. In its papers, lawyers for Apple have accused the government of basing its case "on mere allegations, faulty assumptions and unfounded conclusions." The California-based company has denied claims that its agreements required publishers to force Amazon to charge more for ebooks. The judge has urged Apple to settle, even suggesting at a recent pretrial hearing that its chances of prevailing at trial are slim. She said: "I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of ebooks, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that." District Judge Denise Cote is scheduled to begin hearing the price-fixing case later on Monday in federal court in Manhattan. On May 22, British publisher Pearson's Penguin unit announced it would pay $75 million in damages plus costs to settle claims by the attorneys general of 33 states and a class-action lawsuit by consumers alleging price-fixing in the ebook market.