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The class action lawsuit accuses Apple and its publishing partners, including Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin, of colluding to raise the prices of e-books, costing consumers millions of dollars in the process.

Hagen Berman, the law firm representing consumers in the suit against Apple and the publishers, issued a press release with updated accusations it says proves the publishers "viewed Amazon as a significant threat to the long-term survival of their profitability," and conspired to form a new pricing model it then forced on the Internet retail giant.

The lawsuit claims Apple and its publishing partners showed "deep antagonism...toward Amazon for its consumer-friendly pricing," listing quotes from several top publishing executives, some taken from Walter Isaccson's best-selling biography of former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.

Lawyers allege the publishers worried Amazon would ruin the publishing industry by offering e-books for $9.99, while Apple, anticipating the launch of the iPad tablet, needed to find a way for its iBookstore to compete with Amazon.

The solution took the form of the agency pricing model, which, unlike the wholesale model Amazon used, allowed publishers to set the prices of e-books and turn a higher profit. However, the agency pricing model also meant a 30-50 percent price increase on e-books for consumers.

Further, the lawsuit alleges publishers threatened to withhold their titles from Amazon if it did not agree to change its pricing, and that no one publisher would have resorted to such strong-arm tactics unless it were aware that several other publishers planned to do the same.

The intensifying scrutiny arrives at a particularly bad time for Apple, which last week unveiled iBooks 2, along with partnerships with publishers to offer reasonably priced digital textbooks to U.S. schools. The success of the class-action lawsuit will likely derail further Apple inroads as it attempts to gain a foothold in a new market.

The U.S. Justice Department and the European Union Commission are also investigating Apple and its publishers for similar antitrust violations.

If the antitrust allegations are found valid, Apple and the other defendants could be forced to change their pricing model and incur tens of millions of dollars in reparations, but the worst damage might be to their respective reputations, which may hobble Apple's progress in a flourishing digital publishing market.