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Beatles Bite Apple

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the back-again-for-the-remix dept.

blamanj writes "Apple Computer, which once got into hot water with the Beatles Apple record label, has been sued once again by the same group. Apple Records says iTunes and the iPod violate the previous agreement." Apple's broke their agreement in the past when speakers were first used with their computers to play music.

4 of 895 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Damn... by FatRatBastard · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not true. He went 50/50 with Sony music in purchasing them. He has since used his share as collateral with some loans he has taken out from Sony. Sony are licking their chops because there's no way MJ is going to pay off what he owes. Eventually (whenever they decide to call in the loan) Sony will own 'em all. But, as of right now MJ still has a 50% stake in them.

  2. Re:O_o by Negadecimal · · Score: 5, Informative

    This whole situation is bullshit, Nobody on earth is going to confuse Apple Computer Inc. with Apple Corps Ltd. So the trademark point should be moot.

    It's not a trademark battle. Apple Computer signed a binding agreement that promised that they'd stay out of the music business.

    Shortsighted, but still a legal contract.

  3. Re:This goes back to the early days of Apple by Stargoat · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Beatles don't control Apple Records anymore. I believe that EMI controls Apple.

    Interesting

    --
    Hoist Number One and Number Six.
  4. Re:This goes back to the early days of Apple by blowdart · · Score: 5, Informative
    I belive Micheal Jackson controls all the beatles works

    Whacko had the rights to most of the lyrics a while back, but sold them to Sony.

    The way music licensing works is generally as follows

    The tune / lyrics belong to whoever wrote them, and these are licensed to a specific publisher. Note that this may not be the label, it can be a seperate company, or in some cases, a part of a company (for example EMI have EMI publishing which licenses tunes and lyrics)

    The record label in turn owns the rights to a particular recording of that music, be it a studio track, or a live track.

    So whilst Sony own the rights to the beatles lyrics, EMI (through Apple Music) own the rights to recordings of those things.

    And that's the simple version, it gets very very messy very quickly when band swap labels, perform live or the song writer moves between publishers.