Sources: Apple Paid $7 Million For Color Labs

In a lawsuit filed today by a former founding employee of Color Labs, one moment of clarity emerged amidst some seriously salacious allegations: Color’s approximately 20 person technology team and some of its key intellectual property assets were indeed acquired by Apple last month. This deal was buzzed about a lot in the press, but to date neither company has provided on the record confirmation — this was a central point in the suit, since former Color employee Adam Witherspoon claims he was intentionally left out from the move to Apple.

TechCrunch has confirmed with sources involved that the Apple deal did indeed go through, and the price paid in all was $7 million. That is higher than the $2 million to $5 million range that had been previously reported by AllThingsD in a much-circulated post.

From the beginning, the Color startup story has been a complicated and messy one, and with the lawsuit filed today, it seems that there is no clean end in sight just yet. But if anything, there is a silver lining here: The majority of the engineers involved found a very safe place to land and some nice compensation for their talents. These days, it seems, regardless of the peripheral drama, technology skills often trump all.