High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against several major Silicon Valley companies, followed by a civil class action in 2013, over claims that they had secretly agreed not to recruit each other's high-tech employees. The companies involved—Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and eBay—were all based in the Silicon Valley area of California. The civil lawsuit, brought by five employees, alleged that from 2005 to 2009, these firms colluded to avoid poaching one another's staff. A 2025 study later estimated that this collusion lowered wages at the affected companies by 5.6%, reduced stock bonuses, and resulted in lower job satisfaction.

The core of the allegations involved "no cold call" agreements. Cold calling—directly contacting an employee of another company who hasn't applied for a job—is a common recruitment method in tech for hiring specialized workers like engineers, programmers, and animators. The plaintiffs argued it was effective because satisfied employees at other firms are often more qualified and stable than active job seekers. The challenged deals were bilateral pacts: Apple with Google, Adobe, and Pixar; Google with Intel and Intuit; and Lucasfilm with Pixar. These agreements had no limits on geography, job type, product area, or time. The civil case also claimed additional pacts required companies to notify each other before making an offer to an employee, and to avoid counteroffers above the initial offer.

The DOJ's 2010 complaint, filed in Washington, D.C., accused Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar of violating the Sherman Act through these "facially anticompetitive" agreements, which it said harmed employees by cutting off job opportunities and disrupting normal wage-setting. A separate suit against Lucasfilm followed later that year. The same day the DOJ filed, it proposed a settlement with the companies. A court approved the final judgment in March 2011, which banned the firms for five years from any agreement to refrain from recruiting each other's employees—going beyond just cold calling—but did not provide compensation to affected workers. Lucasfilm reached a similar settlement in December 2010.