Manhattan Judge, Denise Cote convicts Apple of conspiring with five publishers to fix eBook prices.

Apple Inc. and five publishing houses - Macmillan, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster were accused of fixing prices of e-books. Manhattan Judge, Denise Cote found Apple guilty of conspiring with the publishers to fix prices of eBooks and has accused the iPad company of conspiring to "restrain trade."

While all five publishing houses have come to a settlement with the DOJ, Apple was the last company left in the case and went into trial, June 3. Penguin settled its case for $75m. Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster created a $69m fund for refunds to consumers, while Macmillan settled for $26m.

"The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy," the judge ruled.  "Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010."

Apple spokesman Tom Neumay said the company would appeal against the ruling and fight "false allegations".

In April 2012, the publishing houses entered into a deal with Apple to create what was called the agency model, which allowed these publications to raise the price of their e-books by $3. Under this deal, Apple would receive 30 percent commission on all e-book sales at iBookstore. Also, these five publishing houses would not let any other retailer sell bestselling e-books at a price lesser than available at the iBookstore. Through this deal, the publishers would have the power to fix the price of their e-books. The deal was introduced because the companies disapproved of Amazon's "wholesale" e-book price fixing method, which it launched when it introduced Kindle, reports TIME.

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