Another day, another lawsuit for former NWA legend/producer-turned-almost-millionaire Beats by Dre mogul. Dr. Dre and his business partner, Interscope Records music mogul, Jimmy Iovine are have just been hit with a huge lawsuit by their former business associate and he may have a chance at winning this thing.
Why They’re Being Sued For $100M’s
Nearly 10 years after Beats by Dre hit the market, an entrepreneur named, Steven Lamar, says Dre and Jimmy are trying to stick him for his paper. Therefore, he’s suing them for a whopping $100million! In court docs, Lamar claims to have presented Dre and Jimmy with the idea for their highly successful Apple Music Beats by Dre headphones. Lamar says they’re now trying to cut him out of the agreement they arranged, by allegedly finding a loophole to go forgo paying him.
Via Billboard: Lamar is suing Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, Jimmy Iovine, and Beats Electronics. Lamar alleges being the one back in 2006 to propose to Dre and Iovine a line of celebrity-endorsed headphones based on a design by Robert Brunner, a renowned industrial designer.
But the parties had a falling out in the early years, and Dre and Iovine sued Lamar for breaching contract. This prior lawsuit then led to a settlement where Lamar relinquished rights in exchange for a four percent royalty on every headphone sold by Monster and its affiliates. After the settlement, Beats released new headphone models and began paying a two percent royalty to Brunner until sometime in 2014 when Beats bought out Brunner’s interest. Dre and Iovine would later sell Beats to Apple for $3 billion.
The big question in the case is whether Lamar is due royalties for the later derivative versions of Beats headphones or whether the defendants fulfilled its obligations by merely paying him for the first headphone model.
Prior to now, a judge had tossed Lamar’s case because he/she felt there was not evidence enough to go to trial. In Sept. 2016 though, an appeals court judge deemed that the wording of the agreement between Lamar, Dre, and Iovine was too “ambiguous” to fully exclude Lamar from any profits from altered versions of the original Beats by Dre headphones. Therefore, the three parties are now in a jury trial, pleading their sides of the case in a California court.
They Were Clueless?
According to Billboard, Dre and Jimmy Iovine claim they were clueless of how successful the headphones would be at the time of the agreement and therefore had no way of predicting there would be a follow up version of the headphones to hit the market. However, Lamar came to the trial ready…dude presented a Power Point presentation documenting his, Jimmy’s and Dr. Dre’s early days together, in which Lamar raised the possibility of future different models of the headphones, as well as their future collaboration on a “line of headphones”…not just one version.
Unless Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine can prove otherwise, it looks like their gonna be diggin’ into those collective billion dollar pockets to pull out a spare $100M’s. On a side note, Dre is probably hoping to have better luck than he did on his other recent case, when he lost to a gynecologist named…wait for it…’Dr. Drai’ (pronounced ‘Dr. Dre’). Like we said, another day, another lawsuit…it’s like Dr. Dre’s “been there, done that”…LOL…I couldn’t resist that one.
