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Court rejects earlier $324 million anti-poaching settlement between Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe

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Image via <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/tech-hubris-the-silicon-valley-antitrust-hiring-conspiracy#p2" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>

A judge has rejected a settlement that was reached earlier this year between employees of Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe and their respective companies, CNBC reported today. According to reports from the courtroom, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the settlement was not high enough and should actually be $380 million.

The lawsuit was brought against the tech giants in question by current and former employees who believed (correctly) that their employers had created agreements to avoid attempting to hire engineers from one another. The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.

Emails between executives at these companies revealed that such agreements did exist. and all parties involved agreed that the companies should pay out $324.5 million to affected employees.

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Comments

  1. Taste_of_Apple - 10 years ago

    Judge Koh is really going to make all these companies pay up. In this case, I can’t blame her. This was definitely a blow to all these companies.

  2. Dave Huntley - 10 years ago

    Does anyone vet Koh for her various opinions and mis-steps? Let’s face it she did ZIP when Samsung’s lawyer deliberately released things she told him not to. She said everyone should go find a settlement in this case, they did, then after months she says it’s not good. But she told each side to agree and they did.

    She is less of a judge and more of a hysterical mother.

  3. erikgibson - 10 years ago

    I worked at Adobe (2006-2010) while this was going on but it’s hard for me to see how employees could have been impacted to such a large extent. There were plenty of other companies still hiring in the valley, and I received almost 20% more total compensation than at my previous employer.

  4. Gregory Wright - 10 years ago

    $384 millions is chump change for these companies.

  5. garytreible - 10 years ago

    “The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.”

    Really? I don’t think this agreement had anything to do with salary. You can argue that it effectively becomes a salary issue for some employees, but this is about talent retention as it relates to direct competitors, not salary. Apple has no such agreement with SpaceX for example. A company that would likely benefit from better battery and antenna technology just to name a few areas of overlap. I’m not defending Apple’s actions, I’m just saying that I don’t believe salary was the motivator. If it was, it’s a really poor plan.

    • Gregory Wright - 10 years ago

      “I’m just saying that I don’t believe salary was the motivator. If it was, it’s a really poor plan.”

      You can sugar coat it all you want the effect is the same. The employee loses.

    • herb02135go - 10 years ago

      Salary isn’t a factor in employee retention.

      Seriously?
      Do you work for free?

  6. PressFlix - 10 years ago

    Well it is time that these mammoth companies realize that they cant always get away with unfair treatment of employees. You got to pay to play big dog.