U.S., European antitrust regulators look at e-books

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 7, 2011 5:27pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is looking into allegations that the electronic book industry has violated antitrust law, a top Justice Department official said on Wednesday. In an oversight hearing, the Justice Department's top antitrust official Sharis Pozen, in an roundup of her division's work, said: "We are also investigating the electronic book industry along with the European Commission and with states attorneys general."
In Brussels, the European Commission said Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into whether e-book publishers owned by Lagardere, Pearson Plc, News Corp and two other firms fixed prices with Apple Inc, blocking rivals and hurting consumers.
It identified the publishers as French media-to-aerospace group Lagardere's Hachette Livre unit, News Corp's Harper Collins, CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster, Pearson's Penguin and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck, which owns Macmillan in Germany.
Full report at Reuters.