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Apple, Google, others agree to settle lawsuit over anticompetitive no-hire policies

Apple, Google, others agree to settle lawsuit over anticompetitive no-hire policies

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Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel have all agreed to settle a upcoming antitrust lawsuit based around a no-hire agreement between the companies, reports Reuters. The case, which gained class-action status last October, claimed that the four companies all had no-hire agreements which helped keep employee wages artificially low.

The case was based on no-hire policies that were in place from 2005 to 2009; back in October, California district court judge Lucy Koh ruled that the antitrust concerns of the "overarching conspiracy" made it reasonable to try the case as a class-action lawsuit. Rather than go to trial at the end of May as originally planned, the four companies have agreed to settle with the class, which included some 64,000 employees, though terms of the settlement have yet to be revealed.

Update April 24th, 10:00PM ET: An updated Reuters report says that the four companies will pay out a total of $324 million dollars in the settlement.