GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that despite Apple being a very succesful legal music download service, they have been sued, but not by the music industry.
This time, it is not a problem with the the service itself or what they allow the customers to do with their music, but by violating an agreement with Apple Corp.; The Beatles record label!
Apple has been sued back in the early 1980's by Apple Corp. for trading under the name 'Apple'. The Apple Macintosh company agreed to pay Apple corp. a large sum of money and agreed never to sell or provide music products. By Apple starting up its very successful iTunes pay-per-download service, they have violated their agreement with Apple Corp. Not only that, but Apple also sells the iPod; a hard drive based MP3 player and thus violated their Apple Corp. agreement in two ways.
As we've reported before, at the launch of the online iTunes Music Store, back in the early 1980s, Apple Corp. sued Apple Comp. for trading on its name. The case was settled out of court, with Apple Comp. agreeing to pay Apple Corp. a large sum of money and promising not to offer music products. Toward the end of the decade, Apple Corp. sued again, claiming that the Mac's ability to play and manipulate music was a violation of the previous agreement. Once again, Apple Comp. paid up and agreed not to enter the music market. Presumably it won the right to make play music on the Mac, since the platform has been able to do so ever since. Flip forward to 2003, and what has Apple Comp. done? Entered the music market, in a pretty big way. At the launch of the ITunes Music Store, we wondered whether Apple's notoriously busy legal department had checked over the older agreement, or had even come to a mutually beneficial deal with the Beatles' label. According to a report on Fox News, it looks like they haven't - having spent too much time focusing on threatening fan-run websites. Apple Comp. also offers the iPod, a music player, and that seems to have prompted Apple Corp.'s ire too. Essentially, Apple Corp. claims Apple Comp. has violated both past agreements. |
Just because one offers a legal alternative to peer-to-peer free file swapping, it does not mean that they will not get into trouble by something else.
When I purchased the 'The Beatles - 1' album a while back, I did notice that they had an Apple logo on the back and says "Beatles", "Apple" and the Apple logos are trademarks of Apple Corps Ltd. I thought that Apple Corps were the Apple Macintosh company up until this day. The Apple Corp. logo is a Green Apple where as the Apple iMac (Macintosh) logo is a black/white Apple with a bite out of the right side.
Source: The Register
