Dr.Dre and Jimmy Iovine owe their former business partner Steven Lamar $25,247,350, as a result of a jury ruling against Dre and his Beats Electronics co-founder in a lawsuit.
Lamar sued both men for over $100 million in royalties in 2014. A judge had dismissed the case, after which it was revived by an appeals court and and then put to trial earlier this month.
In the lawsuit, Lamar claims that in 2006 he came to Dre with the idea for celebrity-endorsed headphones. Dre and Iovine “argued that Lamar was only entitled to royalties from the first headphone model.” The final ruling was that he was owed royalties on three models—the Studio 2 Remastered, the Studio 2 Wireless, and the Studio 3—resulting in the $25.2 million payment.
This is the second Beats-related lawsuit for Dr. Dre. In 2016, Suge Knight filed lawsuit against Dr.Dre, claiming that he had a deal with the rapper/producer that entitled him to thirty percent of all of his earnings. This, included the 2014 sale of Beats by Dre to Apple where Beats sold for approximately 3 billion dollars.
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