Civil Suit Against Google, Apple and Other Giants Over Employee-Poaching Ban Continues

Apple Google Employee Poaching Ban

A civil suit against Google, Apple, and many other tech giants originally introduced more than 5 years ago, may continue to further processing. U.S District Judge has ruled that the case has grounds to continue because “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 five year old case, according to the lawsuit, emerged and is still running strong on the grounds that “no solicitation” agreements appeared in 2005 between Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. These agreements prevented companies from contacting employees at other companies in order to steal or “poach” that particular employee for their own company’s benefit.

However, the agreement still allows employees to apply for other positions on their own. The Justice Department investigated the agreements in 2010 and eventually came to an agreement, with companies assuring that none of the company’s would enter into a no-solicitation agreements for five years. This new civil-suit is a class-action civil suit filed by employees who suggested that they were harmed by anti-competitive actions of defendant companies.

There are no dates or times as to when the case will resume in court or when action will be taken against the companies, however, this case brings to light the risks of tech giants attempting to poach employees.

{via Mac Rumors}

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