The US justice department has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple and five major publishers over alleged involvement in price fixing. The biggies mentioned in the lawsuit include Apple and publishers Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Hachette and Pearson. The lawsuit filed in the US District Court of Manhattan accuses the defendants of fixing prices of e-books before the launch of Apple’s iPad in 2010. It is important to note that the popularity of e-book’s was on the rise since 2007, the year Amazon came out with Kindle.

“Beginning in the summer of 2009, we allege that executives at the highest levels of the companies included in today’s lawsuit – concerned that e-book sellers had reduced prices – worked together to eliminate competition among stores selling e-books, ultimately increasing prices for consumers,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking for the government. “As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles.”

It is believed that top level executives from these companies held meetings over lunch or dinner at various upscale Manhattan restaurants to raise, fix and stabilize retail prices.

Consumers are soon to be treated to a third helping of the iPad tablet. Apple execs unveiled the new HD empowered iPad Tablet at an event in California on Wednesday. This iPad tablet has a stunning new display which Apple says has more pixels than those of your HDTV with its 1080p.

The overall look of the new iPad Tablet will remain the same, with a 9.7 inch screen it will be 9.4mm thick and weigh 1.5 pounds. In addition to an extremely high resolution screen this version of the iPad uses the LTE network for 4G wireless connectivity which means that it cruise the internet at higher speeds from wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon. Also it has a more powerful processor in its A5X chip, where the X is short for the quad core graphics power built into the processor.

Increasing pressure from regulators has forced Apple to re-think their privacy options concerning user’s personal contacts. Until now, many apps running on the iOS platform were free to download a user’s personal contact information like phone numbers and e-mail addresses without proper consent. The matter came into light after recent revelations of Social Network “Path” downloading user’s address books and keeping them on their servers without permission. The company quickly cleaned up its act by deleting the data and modified the policy.

The exercise has come to a stage, where it’s become a common practice in the industry. Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram are some of the usual suspects when it comes to collecting such data without consent.

Congressmen Henry Waxman and GK Butterfield have come down hard on Apple and have asked them to tweak the current functionality. They have also raised questions as to why Apple has not taken the privacy of the address data as seriously as its user’s location data. In 2011, the revelation that Apple had an in-built database that could track user location created quite a stir. Apple immediately obliged and made sure such data was removed. Much in the same vein, Apple has said that any application currently collecting user data without permission was in breach of its guidelines. In the next upgrade, it has promised to make sure that users will be asked permission before any data is downloaded.

In a substantial bid to defend its current position, Google has been working on a number of fronts like launching a social networking platform, revamping its privacy policy, revamping its web persona and now the unparalleled and yet unrivalled search giant has acquired several patents from Motorola as a strategic move to strengthen the Android phone market. It is expected that new models of Motorola will now bear the Android version that will be seen as Google’s expansion into the mobile sphere that is currently dominated by smart phones from Apple, Blackberry, Samsung and the recently launched Lumia series from Nokia.

With an initial profile of a mere search engine, Google has delivered immense value to internet users through its thoughtful email platform and the recently launched social networking facet for its users, Google+. Although the latter hasn’t caught on, Google’s strategy is to enable the Android market by acquiring the mobile giant Motorola to extent the influence of its products over to the mobile users, which is being seen as a highly portent market especially in the Asian and South Asian markets where mobile use and presence has more than quadrupled in the last few years.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the new version of Android from Google that Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphones’ use. In a patent battle Apple has taken Samsung to the Federal Court in California. Apple has alleged four patent violations which includes voice command search, searching multiple sources to find information, identifying phone numbers from E-mails and slide to unlock phone features. They have requested a temporary ban on the selling of Galaxy Nexus smartphones.

Galaxy Nexus is the only phone in the market that runs on the newest Android version. But soon, there will be many hardware manufacturers who will adopt it, like HTC corp and Motorola Mobility. Both companies are involved in a separate patent battle with Apple.

In the latest round of legal battles between smart phone makers around the world, Apple has pulled its iPhones and iPads from its German online store but also said that these products will be back soon. This follows a ban placed on Apple products due to a ruling passed last December in favor of Motorola Mobility’s suit in a German Court accusing Apple of illegally using Motorola 3G cellular technology.

Apple’s iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone4 and various versions of the iPad carry technology related to the 3G UMTS, and are thus the products that have been taken off their site in Germany. On their part, Apple has a temporary stay of execution on the argument that the Motorola patent is essential to the general development of the industry and thus should be licensed in a fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis and that Motorola was not following these principles in negotiating a licensing deal. Apple’s spokeswoman said that Motorola has repeatedly refused to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms despite becoming an industry standard patent about seven years ago.