Although they would never say it in public, somewhere amongst Apple’s executives and shareholders there must be many who wished that the company founder and former CEO, the now deceased Steve Jobs, had not woken up one day and decided that he would have a go at taking over the eBook market. The approach he and Apple took, widely regarded as showing just how anti-consumer the company truly is at heart, has already cost a fortune in legal bills and is now likely to cost a good deal more.

As e-Readers in general and Amazon’s Kindle in particular gained popularity several years ago, Jobs decided that Apple would take on the market for eBooks and become the number one seller. Instead of implementing a strategy of competitive pricing to lure the market, Jobs instead went to all the major publishers, proposing deals lucrative to Apple and price-fixing at a higher rate for competitors. This saw Apple hit with an anti-trust lawsuit which they lost, to which Jobs responded by simply vastly increasing the prices of eBooks on iTunes.

A consequence of the case was to have an external monitor appointed to Apple to ensure they complied with the court findings. It is this external monitor that has seen Apple go to court again, with Apple wanting to remove the person appointed, Michael Bromwich, on the grounds that he is, they argue, “biased against the company”.

Apple have come to this conclusion on the basis of Bromwich wanting to interview employees and executives who were involved in the price fixing plan and have interpreted his fee, believed to be in excess of US$1,000 an hour, as in some way giving him a licence to conduct a “witch-hunt” against the company. Several executives of Apple, a company always keen to keep its business affairs private, are believed to have expressed the view that a court appointed monitor is “unconstitutional”.

Although Bromwich himself has not publicly responded to the allegations and is unlikely to, it is known that he has complained to the court about Apple’s treatment of him and their apparent disregard of court orders. He has stated that not one of the people he is required to interview in regards of ensuring compliance has agreed to meet with him, making his job all but impossible.

Lawyers, legal thriller fans and tech junkies will all no doubt be watching what happens when Apple approach the court with this matter. Based on all the information available, it is rather more likely that the judge who hears the argument will be more inclined to find Apple in contempt of court rather than agree with the “unconstitutionality” of having a court order place an external monitor to ensure that the company obeys the law.