Between approximately 2005 and 2009, Defendants Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar allegedly engaged in an “overarching conspiracy” to eliminate competition among Defendants for skilled labor. The conspiracy consisted of an interconnected web of express bilateral agreements among Defendants to abstain from actively soliciting each other’s employees. Plaintiffs allege that each agreement involved a company under the control of Steve Jobs (Co-Founder, Former Chairman, and Former CEO of Apple) and/or a company that shared at least one director with Apple’s Board of Directors. Defendants memorialized these nearly identical agreements in CEO-to-CEO emails and other documents, including “Do Not Call” lists, thereby putting each Defendant’s employees off-limits to other Defendants. Each bilateral agreement applied to all employees of a given pair of Defendants. These agreements were not limited by geography, job function, product group, or time period. Nor were they related to any specific business or other collaboration between Defendants. ...I was a student at Princeton when the university officials openly bragged about various policies designed to reduce competition with other Ivy League colleges.
What is stunning is all the exchanges among top executives. The filing quotes numerous e-mails among Jobs, Sergey Brin, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, and other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters that talk openly about the agreement and various threats when a member to an agreement falls out of line.
The above companies located in the Silicon Valley area largely because it is so easy to poach employees from other companies.
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