Judge Debra Ann Livingston

Apple may be trying to keep the spotlight on its latest foray into the streaming-music business, but it is also still trying to clean up the mess caused by its ham-handed entry into an earlier market: book publishing. A federal court on Tuesday rejected the company's appeal of an earlier ruling that found it guilty of orchestrating a conspiracy with the major book publishers, in what the court said was a successful attempt to artificially inflate the price of e-books.

An appeals court in New York on Tuesday upheld a 2013 verdict that Apple organized an illegal conspiracy with five book publishers to raise the price of ebooks, noting that so-called horizontal price-fixing is "the supreme evil of antitrust."

The ruling ends a long-running legal fight between Apple and the U.S. Justice Department, and paves the way for Apple AAPL 0.58% to start issuing payouts to consumers in a related class-action settlement.

More Blogs