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The settlement payout of a class-action lawsuit over employee-poaching against Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe has been revealed to total $415 million, as reported by Reuters.
The four firms have been embroiled in the suit since 2011 after being accused of conspiring to avoid poaching employees from each other.
An initial settlement offer was placed last year at £325 million, but was rejected by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh.
Koh claimed that the sum was insufficient relative to earnings missed out on by employees thanks to the surreptitious inter-corporate dealings.
She said that any offer would need to be north of $380 million before she would actually accept it.
Fortunately for all involved, Koh finally gave the judicial thumbs-up to the latest offer earlier this week.
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The case focused largely on e-mails sent between Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as top brass from the other rival firms.
Apparently the companies wanted to ensure they wouldn’t lose their top engineers to each other, and made conscientious efforts to prevent cross-hiring.
This understandably left many workers riled up, as the companies’ efforts made it much more difficult to change jobs over in Silicon Valley.
