News: Judge appears poised to approve Apple, Google anti-poaching settlement

A federal judge appears ready to approve a $415 million deal by four Silicon Valley tech giants to settle an antitrust lawsuit that accused them of conspiring to not recruit each other's employees.

During a hearing on Monday, Judge Lucy Koh seemed to support the settlement proposed by Adobe Systems, Apple, Google and Intel, though she scheduled a final approval hearing in July,according to the San Jose Mercury News. Koh in August had rejected the companies' $324.5 million settlement offer, saying the employees harmed by the no-poaching policy deserved more.

The new proposed settlement was revealed in a motion filed by the companies January in US District Court in San Jose, Calif.

Adobe, Apple and Intel declined to comment. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Filed by former employees in 2011, the lawsuit accused the current four defendants along with Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar Animation Studios of carrying out an "interconnected web" of agreements between 2005 and 2009 to not hire each other's workers so they could keep wages low. The lawsuit grabbed the world's attention because it revealed the inner workings and apparent cooperation among some of area's biggest companies.


Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm settled in 2013. Last year, the four remaining companies made their own settlement offer, which Judge Koh rejected as too low. She wrote she was concerned that plaintiffs would receive proportionally less than employees covered by the settlements reached the year earlier with Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit. Those three companies paid a combined $20 million, covering 8 percent of the employees named in the suit.