The US class-action suit involving the employment practices of several bluechip technology companies (Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Intel Corp., amongst others) revealed a private email exchange (which included the above quoted extract) between the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt, in which Jobs requested Google to desist from “poaching” a particular Apple engineer and put an end to employee poaching in general. The civil suit, filed by five software engineers, alleges that the defendants conspired together to keep salaries artificially low by agreeing (under a “cartel” arrangement) not to hire highly skilled IT technicians from one another. The case is set for trial in 2013.