Today a judge in a US court rejected the accusations made by Noel Lee, the founder of the company Monster, against the co-founders Beats, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. The lawsuit was filed last year, the two Apple managers being accused of deceiving their former partner.
More specifically, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre are accused of signing an agreement with HTC to get rid of the Monster founder. Monster used to make and sell Beats by Dre headphones, but the sale of 51% of Beats to HTC changed everything, with Monster being completely excluded from the process after the company's leadership was changed as part of that sale.
Beats later bought back its shares from HTC and Lee was convinced to sell his 5 percent of the shares, believing that it was all a complex plan to prevent him from collecting profits from Beats. Moreover, he would have earned 100 million dollars from the sale to Apple, but he was left without this money because he was tricked into selling his shares beforehand.
The judge presiding over this case concluded that everything Beats did was legal based on the contracts signed with Lee and Monster, and the claims against HTC America were also rejected. The whole process of the founder of Monster was based on these accusations and the evidence provided with them, so it will be practically difficult for him to prove that he is right.
After filing this lawsuit, those from Apple revoked Monster's licenses to manufacture Made for iPhone accessories and of course its products are not sold in Apple stores. The trial is going to start next week, but without everything that was cancelled, it will be almost impossible to prove what the founder of Monster claims.
