Apple Reaches Settlement With Ex-Chairman Jobs

Apple Computer has settled its $5-million suit against Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former chairman, and his new company, Next Inc., the firms said Friday.

Terms of the settlement, reached late Friday, place restrictions on Next’s products and marketing plans, prohibit it from hiring any Apple employees for six months and allow Apple to periodically inspect Next’s products, Apple spokeswoman Barbara Krause said.

The suit will be dismissed without prejudice, Krause said, meaning that it can be reinstated if Apple feels that Jobs has violated the agreement or if Next’s products are found to incorporate proprietary information.

At Next in Palo Alto, spokeswoman Andrea Cunningham said the settlement “allows Steve (Jobs) to do what he said all along he was going to do.” She defined that as developing a “high-end, advanced function scholars’ workstation” targeted at the higher-eduction market.

Neither Jobs nor Apple President John Sculley was available for comment.

Employees at Next said Jobs was very happy about the settlement. “He popped a few champagne corks” before leaving “to go away for the weekend and celebrate,” Cunningham said.

Both companies insisted that they had been working toward a settlement of the suit since it was filed last Sept. 23.

The suit accused Jobs of breaching his fiduciary duty to Apple and claimed that Next planned to use confidential information to compete with Apple in one of its most lucrative markets--education.