While Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine might be the more recognizable faces of Beats, there were others who were also involved with founding the audio company. One of them is Steven Lamar who alleges that he is one of the co-founders of the company. In fact he has used his co-founder status to help promote his own company, ROAM, which made the headphones that you can see above.
However it seems that Beats is not happy with Lamar’s use of his co-founder status and have recently filed a lawsuit against Lamar for apparently placing misleading statements on his website claiming that he was the co-founder of Beats. However according to Lamar, he claims that he was the first to come up with the idea for a headphones brand using cutting edge technology and backed up by a prominent artist at the same time.
He claims to have met up with Jimmy Iovine who then recommended Dr. Dre for the job. According to the lawsuit, “He does not have — nor has he ever had — any ownership interest in the company. Moreover, Jibe Audio was not responsible for the ‘concept, design, manufacturing and distribution’ of Beats’ headphones.”
It is unclear as to how this will be settled, but prior to Beats being acquired by Apple, Lamar had managed to retain a 4% royalty sales on some of the headphones made by the company, although he did file a countersuit earlier this year in which he alleged that the contract had been breached. In any case if you want additional details, you can check out the official complaint that Beats has filed against Lamar.