With an impending trial in June, Apple CEO Tim Cook maintains that the company had nothing to do with facilitating a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books.
As the last company standing in the upcoming lawsuit over e-book price fixing, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday that the company never had any plans to settle with the government.
"We're not going to sign something that says we did something that we didn't do, so we're going to fight," Cook said during an interview at the D11 conference on Tuesday.
He noted that Apple rejected a settlement because it was asked to sign a document, which said it did something wrong. Cook said he didn't think Apple did anything wrong in that case.
The Justice Department filed the antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five book publishers in April 2012. The government accusing Apple and the publishers of conspiring to illegally fix e-book prices to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its discount pricing.
All five of the publishers involved -- Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which publishes CNET), Macmillan Publishers, and Penguin Group -- have now settled. The most recent publisher to fully settle was Penguin who agreed to pay $75 million to bring an end to the long-running complaints brought by many states and private class plaintiffs.
In a pretrial hearing for the antitrust lawsuit last week, the judge presiding over the case said that she believed the Justice Department will be able to show direct evidence that Apple "facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books." But, she also said that no final decision would be made until after the trial.
With Apple being the last company standing in the lawsuit, there has most likely been pressure for it settle too. However, as Cook made clear in the interview on Tuesday, he maintains that Apple didn't take part in any wrongdoing and that no collusion with the book publishers took place.
In March, the judge ruled that Cook must testify if the case does go to court. Currently, the trial is set to start on June 3.
