After tentatively approving the settlement in March, US District Judge Lucy Koh ruled on Wednesday that some of tech's biggest companies will pay out $415 million to settle a long-running employee poaching lawsuit.

Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, and other major companies were hit with the class-action lawsuit for allegedly agreeing to not poach employees from one another, an action the plaintiffs in the case argued kept wages artificially low. Last year, Judge Koh rejected a $324.5 million settlement, saying the thousands of employees involved in the case deserved more, after it was shown there was "ample evidence of an overarching conspiracy." (Meanwhile, the attorney for the plaintiffs had requested about $81 million in fees, which the judge's ruling this week kicked down to $40 million.)

The case centered on emails between executives at the companies. Steve Jobs, in a 2006 email to Eric Schmidt, said Google was "relentlessly recruiting" from Apple's iPod group, asking that, if true, Schmidt would "put a stop to it."