Apple-Google $415 Million No-Poaching Accord Wins Approval

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Apple Inc. and Google Inc. won preliminary court approval of a $415 million antitrust settlement that would end a four-year battle over claims that they and other companies conspired to avoid hiring from each other.

The ruling brings to a quiet end a case which since 2011 produced dozens of controversial internal e-mails detailing anticompetitive agreements among the companies -- and drew the ire of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, who derided and rejected an earlier $324.5 million proposal to resolve the lawsuit as insufficient.