Civil Suit Against Google, Apple and Others Over Employee-Poaching Ban Can Continue
A U.S. District Judge has ruled that an anti-trust case filed against a number of tech companies can continue, saying "they still have an antitrust claim" according to Bloomberg.
[Judge] Koh didn’t take issue with the allegations about the agreements between individual companies, Joseph Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview after the hearing. Instead, Koh has questions about “how it ties together,” or claims of an over-arching conspiracy between all the companies, he said.
The case goes back more than 5 years, according to the lawsuit, which alleges that "no solicitation" agreements appeared in 2005 between Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. The agreements prevented companies from contacting employees at other companies who were party to the agreement, though employees were free to apply for jobs at other institutions.
The agreements were investigated in 2010 by the Justice Department. The claims were eventually settled, with the companies agreeing not to form no-solicitation agreements for five years.
The current lawsuit is a class-action civil suit brought by employees who said they were harmed by the anti-competitive actions of the defendant companies.
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Top Rated Comments
Silly agreement. Anything that fosters cooperation between competitors means consumers lose. (And in this case, workers).
A business lawyer, Barry Barnett, says it better than I could:
http://blawgletter.typepad.com/bbarnett/2010/12/animating-competition-doj-settles-claim-against-lucasfilm-for-noncompete-deal-with-pixar.html
Problem is the contract was illegal and not like you were given a choice. The boilerplate contracts have many things that are abuse of power.
If you want a job you have to sign that contract like that. So you have 2 choices. Be unemployed or sign a contract like that. There are no other choices.
What in the world are you talking about?
There is. It's called competition. You pay your employees enough to keep them from going to the competition. The free market cuts both ways.