Dr. Dre Accused of ‘Corporate Betrayal’ in Beats Lawsuit
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D Dipasupil/FilmMagic(NEW YORK) — Dr. Dre has been sued by audio cable company Monster, which claims it invented the technology behind the wildly-popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones and is the victim of “corporate betrayal.”
The lawsuit, filed in California on Tuesday by Monster and its CEO, Noel Lee, alleges that Dre, his Beats Electronics co-founder Jimmy Iovine, and their firm concealed Monster and Lee’s roles in designing and engineering the headphones, and improperly took control of Beats by Dr. Dre products before selling the brand to Apple for $3.2 billion last year.
The complaint alleges that Dre’s primary contribution to the brand was “to bless Monster’s headphones when he exclaimed: ‘That’s the s***!'”
Dr. Dre was the highest-earning musician of 2014, according to Forbes, due to his enjoying the biggest single-year payday of any musician in history — $620 million, before taxes — when he sold Beats by Dre to Apple.
Beats declined to comment on the suit.
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