Steve Jobs threatened Palm with court for luring employees

As it became known from the documents considered in the court proceedings, past Apple CEO Steve Jobs threatened Palm companies with patent lawsuits if they did not sign an agreement that companies should not hire people from competing companies.

According to the written testimony of the former CEO of Palm Edward Colligan, this happened in 2007. The documents were disclosed during the trial on antitrust agreements among companies involved in IT.

The shown documents, against the publication of which the heads of large companies spoke , are part of a closed antimonopoly package of documents from five software engineers who worked at Adobe, Intel, Lucasfilm and Intuit. Employees of these companies claim that seven technology companies, including Apple, Intel, Adobe and Google, have colluded in order to eliminate competition for highly skilled workers to prevent them from moving from one company to another.
')
In August 2007, Colligan received a call from Jobs, who was firmly convinced of such employee transitions over the past few months. Colligan writes, “In his call, Jobs expressed confidence that Palm had stolen some of the employees from Apple. As a possible option for further action, Jobs proposed to conclude an agreement between Palm and Apple, according to which neither of them will entice workers, including professional engineers, from the other. ”

“Jobs also said that if Palm refused to accept this proposal, they would face claims on most Apple patents,” he adds, noting that he did not accept Jobs’s offer, and Palm continued to hire Apple employees.

Similar claims from Apple to Palm were renewed in 2009.

During 2008, Apple lured away at least 2% of Palm workers, according to Colligan. If Palm had stolen the same percentage of Apple developers of that time, it would have been 300 people. However, it is alleged that only 3 people moved to Palm.

An e-mail correspondence between Steve Jobs and Colligan began. In response to Palm’s promise to make patent claims, Jobs responded as follows:

“I have no doubt that you understand how much our financial capabilities differ when you write that both our companies will give huge amounts of money to lawyers,” Jobs wrote, noting that he was not too impressed with the Palm patent package. “I would advise you how to take a look at our patent package before you make a final decision.”

As it becomes clear from the evidence and documents, Steve Jobs tried to conclude such an agreement with Google’s top management. The publication of documents continues, Tim Cook, Paul Otellini (Intel) and Eric Schmidt (Google) must testify during this and next months, so that in the near future we can expect new details.