The legal issues between Beats and Monster, which has to do with the way that Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine gained control before selling to Apple, continues to move forward as a new avenue of attention has been revealed.
Monster’s CEO Noel Lee has been straightforward in his belief that he is entitled to some compensation for the sale of Beats Electronics to Apple, which equaled up to $3 billion. Now, as part of the legal tussle between Monster and Beats (now Apple), Lee is putting a bigger focus on the relationship between Beats’ Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine with Apple, especially with Apple’s former CEO, Steve Jobs. Lee believes that the motions made by Dre and Iovine leading up to the sale of Beats to Apple was a years-long endeavor to force Lee and Monsters out of the deal.
Iovine and Steve Jobs were friends, of which that’s never necessarily been a secret. Jobs praised Iovine in the past for building the business that he did, especially with having a past in making music. According to Apple Insider, Jobs was even known to use Beats headphones while listening to an iPod.Iovine even had a role in the inception of Apple’s music streaming service, now known as Apple Music. Back in March, Iovine said that he had been meeting with Apple on a regular basis since 2004, all in the hopes that Apple would jump into the music subscription business.
While Jobs’s and Iovine’s connection is obvious, any tether between Apple’s former CEO and Dr. Dre is a bit more hidden. In 2003, when Apple unveiled iTunes for Windows, Dr. Dre was the celebrity contacted with iChat to talk about it, but otherwise it would appear that Iovine had the biggest connection to Apple through the years.
Recently, Monster said that Apple had removed the company from its MFi licensing program for Apple products, and specifically states that Apple removed them due to the legal issues.
[via Apple Insider; Bloomberg]
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