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Apple's Steve Jobs, Google Utilized Illegal no-Hire Agreements

By - Source: The Verge | B 29 comments

Former Palm CEO Edward Colligan didn't succumb into pressure.

According to leaked emails, Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs and Google utilized illegal no-hire agreements.

According to a court filing made public on Tuesday, Jobs threatened to file a patent lawsuit against Palm if its former chief executive, Edward Colligan, didn’t agree a deal with Apple that would result in neither company poaching each other's workers.

The filing is a civil lawsuit from five technology workers against Apple, Google and others that alleges the firms discussed methods to decrease wages. A sworn statement from Colligan reads:

"In 2007, I received a call from Steve Jobs, the Chief Executive Officer of Apple. In the months before the call, several employees had moved between the two companies. On the call, Mr. Jobs expressed concern about employees being hired away from Apple by Palm. As a solution, Mr. Jobs proposed an arrangement between Palm and Apple by which neither company would hire the other's employees, including high tech employees. Mr. Jobs also suggested that if Palm did not agree to such an arrangement, Palm could face lawsuits alleging infringements of Apple's many patents."

Jobs said the following when stating what the legal consequences could have been should Colligan not have agreed: "I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies when you say: ‘We will both end up paying a lot of lawyers a lot of money.’" He also told Colligan:

"Just for the record, when Siemens sold their handset business to BenQ they didn't sell them their essential patents but rather just gave them a license. The patents they did sell to BenQ are not that great. We looked at them ourselves when they were for sale. I guess you guys felt differently and bought them. We are not concerned about them at all. My advice is to take a look at our patent portfolio before you make a final decision here."


The court filings also detail how Google developed its own no-hire agreements. Upon Google’s human resources director asking then-CEO and current executive chairman Eric Schmidt about sharing its agreements with competitors, "Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared ‘verbally, since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?’"

Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said that Google has "always actively and aggressively recruited top talent." Schmidt, meanwhile, is due to be questioned by plaintiff lawyers in February.

According to plaintiffs' counsel, U.S. Judge Koh hasn't decided whether to make the civil suit into a class action lawsuit. Apparently, it would could cost the defendants "hundreds of millions of dollars."


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Top Comments
  • 22 Hide
    Memnarchon , January 24, 2013 11:15 AM
    “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

    -Honore de Balzac
  • 15 Hide
    virtualban , January 24, 2013 11:22 AM
    I find it disturbing how greed can change a person, from the idealist guy that said "great artists steal", intended to bring out the best product possible with whatever means he could, to this ugly soul that would patent everything under the sun, prior art or non prior art, to stop competition from bringing out well deserved better products. And trying to control who works where, and complaining when the competition manages to snatch those people.. sigh...
  • 12 Hide
    virtualban , January 24, 2013 11:10 AM
    And Apple uses to this day IMO very illegal 'rectangle with rounded corners' and 'slide to unlock' ways to suppress competition. Let them whine.
Other Comments
    Display all 29 comments.
  • 12 Hide
    virtualban , January 24, 2013 11:10 AM
    And Apple uses to this day IMO very illegal 'rectangle with rounded corners' and 'slide to unlock' ways to suppress competition. Let them whine.
  • 5 Hide
    JeanLuc , January 24, 2013 11:11 AM
    Are those actually emails or has someone just made them up as 'what could have been said'?
  • 22 Hide
    Memnarchon , January 24, 2013 11:15 AM
    “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

    -Honore de Balzac
  • 2 Hide
    alvine , January 24, 2013 11:15 AM
    they should be allowed to work in either one as long as they are not stealing company's secrets
  • 15 Hide
    virtualban , January 24, 2013 11:22 AM
    I find it disturbing how greed can change a person, from the idealist guy that said "great artists steal", intended to bring out the best product possible with whatever means he could, to this ugly soul that would patent everything under the sun, prior art or non prior art, to stop competition from bringing out well deserved better products. And trying to control who works where, and complaining when the competition manages to snatch those people.. sigh...
  • 4 Hide
    ericburnby , January 24, 2013 12:25 PM
    I find it disturbing they Google and Intel are also being pursued by the government as they colluded with Apple. Which means all 3 are guilty of the same crime.

    So why are people only talking about Jobs as if he's the only one who did anything wrong? Or posting up Jobs e-mails but conveniently omitting video e from Google and Intel.
  • 2 Hide
    annymmo , January 24, 2013 12:28 PM
    A lot of companies do this kind of stuff.

    One big reason why there are jobless people.
    The corporations should stop trying to save on manpower in development.
  • -2 Hide
    myromance123 , January 24, 2013 12:35 PM
    ericburnbyI find it disturbing they Google and Intel are also being pursued by the government as they colluded with Apple. Which means all 3 are guilty of the same crime.So why are people only talking about Jobs as if he's the only one who did anything wrong? Or posting up Jobs e-mails but conveniently omitting video e from Google and Intel.


    Probably because Jobs is dead, but Google and Intel are still alive and able to protect themselves.
  • 6 Hide
    thecolorblue , January 24, 2013 12:38 PM
    ericburnbyI find it disturbing they Google and Intel are also being pursued by the government as they colluded with Apple. Which means all 3 are guilty of the same crime.So why are people only talking about Jobs as if he's the only one who did anything wrong? Or posting up Jobs e-mails but conveniently omitting video e from Google and Intel.

    perhaps because the jobs worship needs to end yesterday... call this a "perception correction"
  • 5 Hide
    catfishtx , January 24, 2013 12:53 PM
    Well, if you don't want your employees leaving, then make sure they are happy with their pay, their schedule, their benefits, whatever. Give no reason to even look for a job. I worked in the semiconductor industry for many years and witnessed employees coming and going to competitors. It was not always about money.
  • -7 Hide
    classzero , January 24, 2013 1:21 PM
    It is not employees wanting to leave, it is other companies poaching employees. As a manager I would never go to another business and try to poach employees to join my team. Develop your own team, make it great, and great people will want to join. Scalping, poaching is just wrong.
  • 8 Hide
    bllue , January 24, 2013 1:36 PM
    Is anyone surprised? This is Stevie Jobs we're talking about
  • 4 Hide
    rantoc , January 24, 2013 1:50 PM
    Cant be! All rich are Saints /end sarcasm!
  • 5 Hide
    st430 , January 24, 2013 2:47 PM
    there are the evil criminals ...that's why we can't change job ...
    so the billionairs can get richer.
  • 1 Hide
    Vorador2 , January 24, 2013 3:04 PM
    Not surprised. Apple has been using patent lawsuits as a way to bully other companies since a while ago. See the multiple Samsung/Apple cases.

    I hope this makes both the USPTO and the Senate wake up and change the patent system in order to not be used anymore as a weapon to shut down rival business.
  • 1 Hide
    Anonymous , January 24, 2013 3:26 PM
    "I hope this makes both the USPTO and the Senate wake up and change the patent system in order to not be used anymore as a weapon to shut down rival business..."

    Most members of the House and Senate are lawyers, do you think they want to stop the lawsuits? They make too much money off of lawsuits to ever want to do anything to suppress them.
  • 0 Hide
    f-14 , January 24, 2013 3:32 PM
    the medical companies do this alot also and have been doing so for decades. that's why you see all those new medical companies starting up made of former employees from other well known medical companies because new companies that want to make new tech or develop and pursue a deeper more extensive particular field have no such agreements with the well known companies and yet still have the close ties within them.
  • -4 Hide
    dalethepcman , January 24, 2013 4:01 PM
    Quote:
    According to leaked emails, Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs and Google utilized illegal no-hire agreements.


    You must have one of those inintech "Jump to conclusions" products. Please show me the law that states a CEO cannot remind the competition that their employee's cannot legally be recruited to the same fields.

    All I see five employee's whining because they didn't like something at their job, and were unable to legally transfer their skill set to another employer that was in a direct competition role with their current employer. There are usually no-compete clauses when your hired on by a tech company, this process is not illegal by any means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause .

    p.s.
    when stealing an article from another site, try following the link to the section where they give credit to the original article that they stole from.

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/23/business-us-apple-google-lawsuit-idUKBRE90M04Y20130123
  • -1 Hide
    Anonymous , January 24, 2013 4:34 PM
    Those emails explain why the price of Apple stocks are going down
  • 2 Hide
    Cazalan , January 24, 2013 5:11 PM
    I thought these guys were smarter than that. Putting it in an email? That's just pure stupidity.

    Imagine where we would be technologically if corporate greed wasn't holding us back.
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