The billionaire boys club has run into a bit of legal trouble
When you’re at the top of your game, you become a target. Ask anybody. Jay Z, LeBron James, Barack Obama, Sony, etc. Well, naturally, when Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre sold their Beats Electronics company to Apple for a reported $3 billion tag, their competitors weren’t elated. Cue in Monster Electronics, who co-designed the original Beats headphones, who are now suing Dre, Jimmy and Beats Electronics, claiming that they worked closely with Monster experts and used their engineering and design tactics fraudulently in the Beats endeavors that followed Beats not renewing its contract with Monster in 2012.
Monster CEO Noel Lee also claims that the year before Beats’ contract with Monster was up, HTC made a $300 million investment into Beats, but Dre and Jimmy bought back those shares a year after the dissolution of the contract, in 2013, completely ending their relationship with Monster. Lee stood to gain $100 million from the sale of Beats Electronics to Apple last year had Monster been retained in the contract negotiations of 2012.
