Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre just made billions off Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics, but the company is ready to squeeze out a few billion more from a ring of Chinese knockoffs.
Legal filings from Beats claim that cheap counterfeit headphones are screwing the company out of billions of profits by using the company’s popular “b” logo to rake in an ungodly $135 billion in sales. Now the doctor wants his cut.
According to court filings obtained by TMZ, Beats has listed a number of companies and websites based in China that are allegedly using Beats’ trademarks. Beats makes sure to note that Lady Gaga, Diddy, LeBron and le Biebs all use the shiny plastic cans as their headphones of choice, so it has a vested interested in protecting its trademark.
Beats wants the court to order a halt on all sales of the counterfeit headphones, as well as award the company ownership of all domain names mentioned and all the profits from the fakes.
Iovine and Dre sold Beats Music and the Beats by Dre headphones-and-speakers line to Apple in May for $3 billion. Forbes estimated Dre’s cut would put his net worth just shy of the $1 billion mark that Tyrese Gibson bragged about in a drunken Facebook video. Break off a small percentage of the alleged $135 billion in swindled sales and maybe Dre really will be the first hip-hop billionaire.
Via: BET
