Apple has lost its final bid to overturn a judgment that it broke antitrust laws by conspiring to raise ebook prices, in its latest bruising encounter with the US judicial authorities.
The US Supreme Court rejected the company’s bid for an appeal against lower court rulings that it engaged in “marketplace vigilantism” against rival Amazon and “unreasonably restrained trade” by creating a “cartel” with publishers to control ebook prices.
The ruling comes as the company begins a long fight with the US justice department over whether it can be forced to help investigators break open an iPhone belonging to one of the killers in the San Bernardino terrorist shootings in December.