Salary Price-Fixing in Silicon Valley

A lawsuit alleging price fixing among some of Silicon Valley's largest companies will proceed to trial, says U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California. The defendants include Google (GOOG), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Intel Corp. (INTC), Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE), Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s Pixar animation unit, Intuit Inc. (INTU) and Lucasfilm Ltd. There was collusion in Silicon Valley to hold down salaries paid to technical employees. Apple was a prominent promoter of "no recruit" agreements, and Steve Jobs himself threatened Palm with unrelated patent litigation in order to bully Palm into complying.

The Verge: The no-hire paper trail Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt didn't want you to see
Slashdot: Steve Jobs Threatened Palm To Stop Poaching Employees
Techcrunch: Apple, Google, 5 Others To Be Denied Dismissal Of “No Poach” Conspiracy Case
Bloomberg: Apple, Google Must Face Employee-Poaching Ban Antitrust Lawsuit

The lawsuit uses some of the evidence uncovered by a Department of Justice settlement in 2010 with the same companies, as reported by Vorpal Trade earlier (High tech hiring runs afoul of RICO?). So far, no compensation has been paid to employees who were the supposed victims of the collusion to hold down salaries, though a fine was paid to the U.S. Government.

More on the settlement:
Wall Street Journal, 9/17/10: DOJ, TechFirms Near Deal in Hiring Probe
AllThingsD, 9/24/10: DOJ, Tech Companies Settle Hiring Probe
BizJournals, 9/24/10: Tech giants settle hiring probe; Microsoft says it wasn't targeted

Sort of in the same category, but not nearly as real, and smacking greatly of wishful thinking, was AngelGate, in which it was alleged that a small group of angel investors in high-tech conspired to hold down the valuations of start-up companies they would fund.