Four Tech Giants Including Apple Reach New Settlement On Antitrust Hiring Case

(RTTNews) - Technology giant Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and Google, Inc. (GOOG, GOGL) are among four technology companies in the Silicon Valley that have reached a new settlement on a class-action suit related to violation of antitrust laws on poaching each other's employees.

The lawsuit alleges that the four technology companies, including Intel Corp. (INTC) and Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE), conspired not to hire each others employees, a move that will not provide the employees the bargaining power for an increase in wages.

The class-action is bought up in 2011 by about 64,000 current and former employees. The details on the settlement, including the settlement amount, are currently not available. The trial was scheduled to begin on April 10.

The case was primarily filed based of emails of late Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and some others that revealed plans to avoid hiring each others prized employees.

The settlement is now expected to be filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California for court approval.

An earlier $324.5 million settlement reached by the parties in August 2014 was rejected by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California as one of the Adobe employees objected to it as being too low. Koh was seen urging to hike the settlement to at least $380 million in order to match an earlier settlement.

AAPL closed Tuesday's regular trading session at $110.22, up $0.97 or 0.89% on a volume of 67.09 million shares, and GOOG closed at $496.18, up $3.63 or 0.74% on a volume of 2.37 million shares.