A US Judge has barred Apple including most favoured nation clauses in any contracts with ebook publishers for the next five years.
Such clauses ensure that competitors cannot be offered better terms than Apple, a condition the US Department of Justice says restricts competition between resellers.
In July Apple was found guilty of conspiring with publishers to raise ebook prices and thwart competition.
The DoJ sued the iBooks operator and iPad maker over the decision to adopt the agency pricing model which sees publishers set the final retail price and pay the retailer a commission.
Many publishers adopted it in order to sell through Apple’s iBooks app and subsequently extended the model to other retailers including Amazon’s Kindle store.
The DOJ said Apple and big publishing houses Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster and Penguin colluded over the prices of e-books.
Although the denied the charges,the publishers settled with the US authorities, leaving Apple as the sole defendant.
On Friday Judge Denise Cote set out the sanctions she was imposing on Apple, including a requirement to to stagger future contract negotiations with the publishers who settled.
Apple will also have to work with an external monitor who will ensure the firm complies with the court’s ruling.
However the DoJ was unsuccessful in its bid to have the court order Apple to allow rivals such as Amazon to include purchasing links in their apps for iPhone and IPad.
Apple required rivals to remove the links in 2011 unless they were willing to pay it a commission on sales generated through the apps.
An Apple spokesman denied the firm had conspired to fix prices and said it would appeal the court’s verdict.