Four of Silicon Valley's biggest players have formally agreed to settle claims filed by employees and pay $325 million. The claims filed by the employees accused the companies of colluding to not steal talent from each other, effectively limiting competition, as reported by Reuters. The settlement included Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., Google, Intel Corp., and around 64,000 workers. Information on the settlement was disclosed in documents filed with the federal court in San Jose, California on Thursday.

The lawsuit accused companies in Silicon Valley of conspiring with each other in limiting competition and keeping employee wages down, including those of programmers, engineers, and other technical staff, among others. This is a rather embarrassing revelation for the tech giants whose operations are now more closely monitored than ever. A potential amount of $9 billion in damages could have been sought against them. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2011. Disclosed information consists of communications including emails between Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and then-Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Jobs apparently admonished Schmidt and told him to stop raiding his company. Jobs reportedly threatened Google's co-founder as well in the event that he would steal Apple's workers.

The workers, however, chose to settle for a 10th of the price they planned to seek, which resulted in each of them receiving a few thousand dollars each on average. Initially, the workers filed for $3 billion on a trial set to begin on May 27. If they had won, damages would possibly have been tripled based on the federal antitrust law. Taking things into perspective, the settlement is equal to a mere 0.4 percent of the combined quarterly revenue of the companies involved. Workers' lawyers are also seeking to receive their share from the settlement, amounting to as much as 25 percent in fees plus expenses. They could receive $1.2 million based on the filing.