Submitted by Fox First at Ten on September 19th
BRUSSELS (AP) - Apple and four major publishing houses are offering concessions to the European Union's antitrust watchdog to ease concerns that they may have illegally colluded to raise prices for e-books.
The EU Commission opened an antitrust probe into Apple Inc. and the e-books publishers last December and said Wednesday it was inviting comments from other parties in the sector over the next month.
The four publishers are Hachette Livre, a unit of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp.; CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster; and Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan.
If ultimately approved, the publishers' commitments would be legally enforceable and could bring an end to the case.
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