Amazon to be blamed for the e-book price fixing allegations on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL, AMZN)

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in comments made by Apple Inc in an US court is said to have been the origin of the e-book price booking allegations made on the latter.

Apple along with other publishers had been accused of conspiring price booking of e-books higher than Amazon prices. The accusations included that had Apple negotiated with publishers to increase prices to $12.99 and higher which was very high compared to the discounted price of $9.99 offered by Amazon. Consequently, the e-book readers had to pay extra price than valid for the popular books.

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Apple in its defense has said that Amazon had been the driving force behind all such allegations and that the website retailer hosted a two-day meeting with government officials at its Seattle headquarters to discuss the investigation. As per reports from The Wall Street Journal, Apple had gone to the extent of adding that Amazon had made at least 14 employees available to government investigators and was asked to turn over only a “fraction” of documents that others in the case did.

Supporting Apple’s comments was Authors Guild who observed that the DOJ proposed settlement would hurt traditional book retailers by driving the book trade to the Kindle world of Amazon.

Apple commented in the filings that it had never “sought to benefit from collusion.”

Currently, Apple is creating a new 52-week high on the expected iPhone5 sales and the strong rumors of its new iPad while Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is also trading near its 52-week high at $241.17.