Apple will pay $450 million after losing ebooks price-fixing appeal

A federal appeals court has shot down Apple’s challenge to a 2013 ruling finding the company guilty of fixing ebook prices, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Apple had already agreed to pay $450 million, mostly to consumers, so long as the decision was not overturned. Today’s 2-1 ruling from the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan seals the deal.

The ruling is an end to the protracted battle between Apple and the US Department of Justice. The DOJ first brought charges against Apple and book publishers in 2012, and Apple chose to fight the case. The company was found guilty in July of 2013, with the judge ruling there was “a clear portrait of a conscious commitment to cross a line and engage in illegal behavior,” but Apple has been appealing the ruling. Had the appeal gone in the company’s favor, Apple would have been saddled with a considerably smaller sum to pay.

“We conclude that the district court correctly decided that Apple orchestrated a conspiracy among the publishers to raise ebook prices,” Second Circuit Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote, according to the Journal.