Four Tech Giants Reach Tentative $415 Mln Settlement In Antitrust Hiring Case

(RTTNews) - Four technology giants Apple, Inc. (AAPL), Google, Inc. (GOOG, GOGL), Intel Corp. (INTC) and Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE), reportedly reached a tentative $415 million settlement on a class-action lawsuit related to violation of antitrust laws on poaching each other's employees.

The U.S. District Court in San Jose, California has granted preliminary approval for the settlement. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh stated that the settlement avoids the complex and expensive litigation.

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

The settlement amount will be used to fund payouts to thousands of affected employees. However, it requires the approval of all the employees and final court approval, which could be granted in a hearing on June 9.

The lawsuit alleged that the four technology companies conspired not to hire each others employees, a move that will not provide the employees the bargaining power. This limited wage hikes from 2005 to 2009 as it restricted their ability to move between jobs.

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

An earlier $324.5 million settlement reached by the parties in August 2014 was rejected by Koh in San Jose, California as one of the Adobe employees objected to it as being too low. Koh was seen then urging to hike the settlement to at least $380 million in order to match an earlier settlement. The companies increased their settlement off to $415 million in January.