<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>will_brown</author><text>Philip let me address the three legal issues you seemed curious about.&lt;p&gt;1.  Non-compete clauses are not exactly &quot;illegal&quot; in California rather unenforceable.  They are put into agreements typically as boiler plate &quot;I agree for a period of &apos;x&apos; I will not work for a company that competes with employer or start my own.&quot;  So if you were hired in California and went to work for a competing company in California, it would be safe to say if there was a non-compete&quot; clause in the original contract the courts would not enforce it.  However, these are multi-national corporations so non-compete clauses can be enforceable in a lot of jurisdictions outside California.&lt;p&gt;2.  As it relates to the idea that Apple was trying to sign an agreement with Palm not to hire each others employees,  anti-compete is between the employer/employee not two competing companies, so the companies have the contractual right to enter into these agreements.  &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;*This may be a general rule, but your gut instinct is right on because there are a number of exceptions that would make agreements between competing companies illegal, for example if they had an effect of price fixing.&lt;p&gt;3.  Apple&apos;s approach of &quot;threatening lawsuit&quot; for patent infringement is not tactful, but not extortion either.  Laws on this point can be very strict, for example you cannot necessarily threaten lawsuit, but  Apple is within its right to send cease and desist with formal demand when it feels its patents are being violated.  Naturally, part of a demand is agreement to not pursue the lawsuit if the demand is met. It may sound like extortion, but do not forget Palm does not have to agree to the terms of the demand (Palm might not even be violating Apple patents) and Palm can always take its chances in court and even if they lost they could still hire Apple employees.</text><parent_chain><item><author>philp</author><text>Appalling.&lt;p&gt;Maybe somebody with a legal education that eclipses mine can chime in here, but isn&apos;t this whole exchange just mired in liability landmines? For starters, Jobs is trying to coerce a non-compete clause out of Colligan. To the best of my knowledge, that is just flat out illegal in California. Then we have the pretty much blatant threat of unrelated patent litigation if Palm chooses not to cooperate with the aforementioned hiring policy. Shouldn&apos;t that be regarded as extortion?&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear an expert opinion on why this exchange even took place in any traceable from. I imagine an Apple lawyer would see Jobs type this up and just burn the whole place to the ground...</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Steve Jobs&apos; exchange with Palm CEO Ed Colligan</title><url>http://www.scribd.com/doc/121737673/Colligan-Affidavit</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ajsharp</author><text>I&apos;m no lawyer, but I&apos;m pretty sure what Jobs was suggesting was some form of collusion. I don&apos;t know that his threats could be held up as extortion, but collusion is a prosecutable offense. My question is, what might be the statute of limitations on something like this? Does it disappear with the passing of Jobs, or could Apple still be held responsible for this?</text><parent_chain><item><author>philp</author><text>Appalling.&lt;p&gt;Maybe somebody with a legal education that eclipses mine can chime in here, but isn&apos;t this whole exchange just mired in liability landmines? For starters, Jobs is trying to coerce a non-compete clause out of Colligan. To the best of my knowledge, that is just flat out illegal in California. Then we have the pretty much blatant threat of unrelated patent litigation if Palm chooses not to cooperate with the aforementioned hiring policy. Shouldn&apos;t that be regarded as extortion?&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear an expert opinion on why this exchange even took place in any traceable from. I imagine an Apple lawyer would see Jobs type this up and just burn the whole place to the ground...</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Steve Jobs&apos; exchange with Palm CEO Ed Colligan</title><url>http://www.scribd.com/doc/121737673/Colligan-Affidavit</url></story>