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High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation
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High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation
High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation is a 2010 United States Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust action and a 2013 civil class action against several Silicon Valley companies for alleged "no cold call" and no-poaching agreements which restrained the recruitment of high-tech employees.
The defendants were high-technology companies Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay, each of which was headquartered in Silicon Valley, in the southern San Francisco Bay Area of California.
The civil suit was filed by five plaintiffs. It accused the tech companies of collusion between 2005 and 2009 to refrain from recruiting each other's employees.
A 2025 study found that this collusion reduced wages at the colluding firms by 5.6%, reduced stock bonuses for employees, and led to worse job satisfaction.
Cold calling is one of the main methods used by companies in the high-technology sector to recruit employees with advanced and specialised skills, such as software and hardware engineers, programmers, animators, digital artists, Web developers and other technical professionals. Cold calling involves communicating directly in any manner with another firm's employee who has not otherwise applied for a job opening. Cold calling may be done in person, by phone, letter, or email. According to the legal brief filed by a plaintiff in one of the class-action cases, cold calling is an effective method of recruiting for the high-technology sector because "employees of other [high-technology] companies are often unresponsive to other recruiting strategies... [and] current satisfied employees tend to be more qualified, harder working, and more stable than those who are actively looking for employment."
The challenged "no cold call" agreements are alleged bilateral agreements between high technology companies not to cold call each other's employees. The DOJ alleges that senior executives at each company negotiated to have their employees added to 'no call' lists maintained by human resources personnel or in company hiring manuals. The alleged agreements were not limited by geography, job function, product group, or time period. The alleged bilateral agreements were between: (1) Apple and Google, (2) Apple and Adobe, (3) Apple and Pixar, (4) Google and Intel, (5) Google and Intuit, and (6) Lucasfilm and Pixar.
The civil class action further alleges that agreements also existed to (1) "provide notification when making an offer to another [company]'s employee (without the knowledge or consent of the employee)" and (2) "agreements that, when offering a position to another company's employee, neither company would counteroffer above the initial offer."
On September 24, 2010, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division filed a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia alleging violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In US v. Adobe Systems Inc., et al., the Department of Justice alleged that Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by entering into a series of bilateral "No Cold Call" Agreements to prevent the recruitment of their employees (a similar but separate suit was filed against Lucasfilm on December 21, 2010). The DOJ alleged in their Complaint that the companies had reached "facially anticompetitive" agreements that "eliminated a significant form of competition ... to the detriment of the affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities." The DOJ also alleged that the agreements "were not ancillary to any legitimate collaboration", "were much broader than reasonably necessary for the formation or implementation of any collaborative effort", and "disrupted the normal price-setting mechanisms that apply in the labor setting". The same day it filed the suit, the DOJ and the defendants proposed a settlement.
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High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation
High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation is a 2010 United States Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust action and a 2013 civil class action against several Silicon Valley companies for alleged "no cold call" and no-poaching agreements which restrained the recruitment of high-tech employees.
The defendants were high-technology companies Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay, each of which was headquartered in Silicon Valley, in the southern San Francisco Bay Area of California.
The civil suit was filed by five plaintiffs. It accused the tech companies of collusion between 2005 and 2009 to refrain from recruiting each other's employees.
A 2025 study found that this collusion reduced wages at the colluding firms by 5.6%, reduced stock bonuses for employees, and led to worse job satisfaction.
Cold calling is one of the main methods used by companies in the high-technology sector to recruit employees with advanced and specialised skills, such as software and hardware engineers, programmers, animators, digital artists, Web developers and other technical professionals. Cold calling involves communicating directly in any manner with another firm's employee who has not otherwise applied for a job opening. Cold calling may be done in person, by phone, letter, or email. According to the legal brief filed by a plaintiff in one of the class-action cases, cold calling is an effective method of recruiting for the high-technology sector because "employees of other [high-technology] companies are often unresponsive to other recruiting strategies... [and] current satisfied employees tend to be more qualified, harder working, and more stable than those who are actively looking for employment."
The challenged "no cold call" agreements are alleged bilateral agreements between high technology companies not to cold call each other's employees. The DOJ alleges that senior executives at each company negotiated to have their employees added to 'no call' lists maintained by human resources personnel or in company hiring manuals. The alleged agreements were not limited by geography, job function, product group, or time period. The alleged bilateral agreements were between: (1) Apple and Google, (2) Apple and Adobe, (3) Apple and Pixar, (4) Google and Intel, (5) Google and Intuit, and (6) Lucasfilm and Pixar.
The civil class action further alleges that agreements also existed to (1) "provide notification when making an offer to another [company]'s employee (without the knowledge or consent of the employee)" and (2) "agreements that, when offering a position to another company's employee, neither company would counteroffer above the initial offer."
On September 24, 2010, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division filed a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia alleging violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In US v. Adobe Systems Inc., et al., the Department of Justice alleged that Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by entering into a series of bilateral "No Cold Call" Agreements to prevent the recruitment of their employees (a similar but separate suit was filed against Lucasfilm on December 21, 2010). The DOJ alleged in their Complaint that the companies had reached "facially anticompetitive" agreements that "eliminated a significant form of competition ... to the detriment of the affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities." The DOJ also alleged that the agreements "were not ancillary to any legitimate collaboration", "were much broader than reasonably necessary for the formation or implementation of any collaborative effort", and "disrupted the normal price-setting mechanisms that apply in the labor setting". The same day it filed the suit, the DOJ and the defendants proposed a settlement.