For those who came in late, Apple has previous for running price cartels after it was caught jacking up the price of ebooks with some of its publisher mates. In that case the idea was to bring Amazon to its knees. Apple denied all that and even got into a bit of trouble when it initially refused to co-operate with a court appointed anti-trust consultant.

Now Apple has being caught trying to “sterilise” the French channel and France's competition authority has imposed a record €1.1 billion fine on US tech giant Apple for what it sees as anti-competitive practices.

It is the biggest fine ever imposed by the French regulator.

The firm and two of its wholesalers in France were found to have an unfair agreement to control prices.

The investigation began in 2012, following a complaint by eBizcuss, which sells Apple products as an Apple Premium Reseller.

The authority's chief Isabelle de Silva said: "Apple abusively exploited the economic dependence of these premium resellers on it and imposed unfair economic conditions on them that were worse than those for its integrated network of retailers".

Apple says it profoundly disagrees with the ruling and is appealing against it. We guess it believes that the French government will run out of money before it does, and it will drag the case out for decades until someone gives up.