Three east coast bookstores are suing Amazon and the big six publishers, arguing that the two signed secret documents to allow the coding of e-books in a way that could only be read on an Amazon Kindle or Kindle app.

The New York Times reports that the lawsuit was filed Friday in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. Three bookstores — the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Posman Books and Fiction Addiction —  say that they and other bookstores were pushed out of the digital market because of the agreements between the big six and Amazon.

The bookstores, who want open-source coding, want “immediate injunction to the practice,” and damages. They bring up Apple’s once-used DRM exclusive coding for music and show how that went downhill because of legal issues.

The big six include Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Hachette.

Previously on GeekWire: Google considering retail store push, but where’s Amazon?

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