Dr. Dre and his business partner Jimmy Iovine have been ordered to pay a whopping $25million to their former business partner Steven Lamar, after the jury ruled in favour of his lawsuit relating to royalties.
The three set up Beats By Dre, a range of ‘celebrity-endorsed headphones’, an idea which Lamar accused the pair of stealing.
The long-running spat has been going on since 2014 when Lamar initially sought $100million in royalties.
The judge dismissed this initial lawsuit in 2015 but it succeeded in an appeals court in 2016 and went to trial this May.
Dre and Iovine “argued that Lamar was only entitled to royalties from the first headphone model.”
The jury ruled in favour of Lamar deciding that Dre and Iovine owed him royalties for three Beats By Dre models – the Studio 2 Remastered, the Studio 2 Wireless, and the Studio 3.
Calculating what he was owed, NME report that the jury awarded him over $7 million for the Studio 2/Remastered headphones, $14 million for the Studio 2 Wireless version and another $2 million for the Studio 3 cans.
Apple bought Beats By Dre from the rapper and Jimmy Iovine back in 2014 for a massive $3 billion.
The Blast report that Dre and Iovine have been ordered to pay Lamar exactly $25,247,350.
