Steven Lamar Sues Beats Over Royalties Owed

It seems that in the face of Apple possibly finalizing and announcing their acquisition of Beats later this week, a new lawsuit has been filed against Beats, this time by one of its co-founders from back in the day, Steven Lamar. Lamar was one of the individuals who helped create the Beats headphones back in 2006, and in the lawsuit he filed against Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, he claims that he is owed royalties from the company’s latest headphones.

Lamar got a pretty raw deal back in the day where he only received a 5% royalty cut from the distribution deal with Monster, while Dre and Iovine received 20%. He later tried to launch his own range of headphones but was sued by Dre and Iovine, which saw Lamar compensated with an additional 4% royalties on some headphone sales. The recent lawsuit filed by Lamar claims that these royalties should be applied to future models of Beats headphones that were similar to the original that was launched.

Lamar’s lawsuit is actually the second lawsuit that was filed against Beats ahead of Apple’s finalization of the deal. It was just last week that MOG founder and former Beats CEO, David Hyman, filed a lawsuit claiming that he is owed $20 million in unfairly-denied compensation. We’re not sure if it is a coincidence or if it is because of the impending deal that these lawsuits are being filed.

However given that the Apple-Beats deal is expected to be worth around $3.2 billion, one of Apple’s biggest acquisitions yet, we can definitely understand why everyone is wanting a piece of that pie.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Audio
Tags: beats, Legal