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Apple’s Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre hit with $25 million bill for Beats headphones royalties

Beats was purchased by Apple quite a while back. With that being said, Apple has yet to design any Beats products in-house, continuing to use the original Beats designs. Today, Apple’s Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have been hit with damages in the millions over a Beats case from 2016.

Billboard reports that Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will be ordered by a jury in a Los Angeles Superior Court to pay $25 million in Beats royalties to Steven Lamar for helping design the original Beats headphones. Lamar filed the suit back in 2016.

A jury on Wednesday decided that Lamar had fulfilled his contract and that the defendants should pay him royalties on the sales of three Beats headphone models, the Studio 2 Remastered, the Studio 2 Wireless and the Studio 3, to the tune of $25,247,350.

Both Iovine and Dre argue that Lamar should only be getting royalties for the first headphone model, the Beats Studio. This led to some confusion regarding a settlement made back in 2007, whether he was getting a one-product deal or a line of celebrity-endorsed headphones that would later be released.

The 2007 deal Lamar signed with Iovine and Young specified only one headphone with a definition of the qualifying product, stating it “embodies the Headphone Design with minor cosmetic modifications.”

The 2016 lawsuit referenced his rights to royalties on headphones that he helped design with Robert Brunner, a well-known industrial designer. He was reportedly seeking $100 million in royalties.


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