Apple's potential defense: The publishers didn't need us to collude on pricing

I've been wondering about Apple's apparent resolve to fight the eBook price-fixing charges leveled against it by the U.S. Justice Department, states and private individuals. Apple's defense and decision not to settle have, so far, made no sense to me. The relative cost and inconvenience of settling with the Justice Department and states would be minimal compared to the potential distraction of Apple's management and reputational damage resulting from years of litigation. So, why is Apple holding out? Keep in mind that I'm not a lawyer, but here are some thoughts:

The publishers wouldn't possibly have been stupid enough to talk directly with each other about adopting uniform agency terms and pricing. Apple would have had to serve as the "switchboard", acting as an intermediary between the various publishers. The problem is that if the Justice Department charges are correct, the publishers did meet face-to-face multiple times to discuss business issues including "the Amazon problem," and also had myriad communications between each other by phone and email. Years ago, when I took a Business Law course in college, my professor said that such contacts between competitors simply shouldn't happen. Even if all the parties do nothing more than talk about the weather, the very fact that the meetings took place can be used as evidence of collusion among competitors. That may explain why, according to the Justice Department, there were never any corporate counsel at the face-to-face meetings held by publishing CEOs in various Manhattan restaurants.

The CEOs could never agree on how to take on Amazon and force the company to increase its selling prices for eBooks; it took Apple to propose first agency terms, and then a "Most Favored Nation" clause that would guarantee that Apple would always have the lowest eBook prices. The publishers could have come up with a similar scheme and worked the details out among themselves. It was convenient for Apple to do the work for them, but Apple wasn't necessary to either create or further the collusion.

The problem for Apple is that the Justice Department appears to have evidence that the company did, in fact, act not only as a "switchboard" between the publishers, but that its role was essential to getting the five publishers on board with exactly the same terms and conditions. There's also evidence that Steve Jobs himself intervened to try to convince Random House to join the other five Big 6 publishers in implementing agency terms. That may be enough to prove that Apple was integral to the conspiracy.