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.
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 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.
