You're right on the one hand that an agreement not to poach each other's employees is not wage fixing per se. But I think you miss the implication -- if none of my employees are enabled to work at another major employer in the same industry, you can in effect compel them to stay employed with you, and thus not have to compete against other employers for increased salary.

Think of it this way -- if you were a high level management that had specific and highly valuable expertise in the Mobile industry, but you were unable to seek employment at any competing mobile employer, you would not have any leverage to negotiate your salary. Hence while this is primarily a non-solicit / non-poach in specifics, it has an effect of depressing wage competition.

On to the note on patents, I think if US Government policy makers were aware of the fact that patents are NOT being used to guarantee innovation and competiton, and instead are being used as blunt instruments to PREVENT innovation by depressing the movement of expertise from one firm to the other, and are being used as huge bags of IP with which to threaten litigation... for reasons totally unrelated to the IP on which they are based... then the whole structure of patents are called into question.

Think of it this way: if Palm was truly infringing on Apple patents and causing true impediments to their business (the real reason for patents, no?), then Apple would sue them. But if instead they're being used as negotiation pawns to leverage decisions that have nothing to do with the IP. This would imply that the patents are really only useful as extortion-type negotiation leverage and not as intellectual property.

Basically, the IP behind the patent is only useful in that if you have enough of it, you can threaten another firm to do what you want them to regardless of whether the IP is truly useful to the firm in the first place.