“Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), Intel Corp. (INTC), and Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) agreed to pay $324 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of more than 64,000 technical employees who claimed their incomes were held down by the companies’ agreements not to recruit one another’s workers, a person familiar with the matter said,” Joel Rosenblatt reports for Bloomberg. “Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed in a court filing by lawyers on both sides announcing their settlement. They said they planned to present the accord for a judge’s consideration by May 27. The person who disclosed the amount asked not to be named because the information is confidential.”
“If the Silicon Valley-based technology firms hadn’t settled, they would have faced a trial in federal court in San Jose, California, with a demand for as much as $3 billion in damages. Under federal antitrust law, damages won at trial could be tripled,” Rosenblatt reports. “Evidence in the case included blunt exchanges in e-mails about no-hire arrangements among executives including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and then-Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt. Some of the e-mails surfaced in a similar lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department that the companies settled in 2010 by agreeing to curtail anti-competitive practices. Unlike that case, in which no fines were paid, the employees’ lawsuit was focused on monetary damages.”
“Among the e-mails cited as proof of collusion was one from Schmidt to Jobs in 2007 explaining Google’s terminating ‘within the hour’ a recruiter who contacted an Apple employee in violation of the companies’ ‘do not call policy.’ Jobs responded to the message with a smiling emoticon,” Rosenblatt reports. “‘Apologies again on this and I’m including a portion of the e-mail I received from our head of recruiting,’ Schmidt, who was then an Apple board member, wrote to Jobs. ‘Should this ever happen again please let me know immediately and we will handle. Thanks!! Eric.'”
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