Apple, Google, Intel and three other US technology giants agreed on Friday to settle charges they had illegally entered into agreements not to poach each other’s employees.
The Justice Department said the settlement, which has been submitted to a US District Court for approval, would prevent Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and Pixar from forging so-called “no solicitation” agreements for employees.
“The agreements challenged here restrained competition for affected employees without any pro-competitive justification and distorted the competitive process,” deputy assistant attorney general Molly Boast said.
“The proposed settlement resolves the department’s antitrust concerns with regard to these no solicitation agreements,” Boast said in a statement.
According to the department, the firms had entered into agreements not to directly solicit each other’s employees, a practice known as “cold-calling.”
Their actions “disrupted the normal price-setting mechanisms that apply in the labor setting,” it said.
The Justice Department said the agreements were between Apple and Google, Apple and Adobe, Apple and Pixar, Google and Intel and Google and Intuit.
In the proposed settlement, the firms do not admit violating the law.
But they are prohibited from “entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.”
The settlement, if accepted by the US District Court for the District of Columbia, would be in effect for five years.
According to the complaint, Apple and Google executives agreed in 2006 not to “cold call” each other’s employees and Apple reached a similar agreement with software maker Adobe in 2005.
Apple and Pixar reached such an agreement in 2007 while Google and computer chip giant Intel and Google and software maker Intuit did so in 2007, it said.
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