Apple Pays Back E-Book Buyers Following Settlement

By Nathan Olivarez-Giles 

Check your inbox -- and your spam filter -- because there might be money in there. Having settled an antitrust lawsuit, Apple Inc. is refunding what you may have overspent on e-books.

On Tuesday, e-book retailers began issuing Apple-funded credits to customer accounts. This follows Apple's agreement to pay $400 million in a settlement that ended an antitrust complaint that accused the company and five of the largest U.S. book publishers of working together to drive up e-book prices.

If you bought e-books from Apple, Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Kobo Inc. between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, this settlement could affect you, so check your emails for notes from those vendors.

The credit will automatically hit your account if you're eligible. How much you'll get back depends on how many e-books you bought, as well as which ones. Customers will receive $6.93 for every New York Times bestseller and $1.57 for all other books, according to a statement from Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, a law firm that litigated the case with the U.S. Department of Justice and 33 state attorneys general.

Hundreds of consumers took to Twitter to announce they had received their settlement credits, some getting more than $100 dollars Many said they would spend their credits on more e-books. The credits will expire by June 24, 2017, Amazon said in a customer FAQ published today.

The publishers, who previously settled for a $170 million sum with the Justice Department and various states, include Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc., Penguin Group USA, Macmillan Publishers and News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers. (News Corp also owns The Wall Street Journal.)

Apple continued to appeal a lawsuit it lost in 2013 until the Supreme Court declined to hear the company's challenges last year, meaning the company must comply with a settlement it reached in 2014 a settlement it reached in 2014.

Neither Apple, Amazon or Kobo responded to multiple requests for comment on the settlement funds reaching consumers. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman declined to comment.

Write to Nathan Olivarez-Giles at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 21, 2016 17:01 ET (21:01 GMT)

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