The computer company has bought the rights to
the Apple trade mark but in a deal which sees it license back
certain of those rights to the record label. Apple Inc, formerly
Apple Computer, is said to have paid up to $100 million for the
rights.
The deal could pave the way for Beatles songs
to be sold through Apple's iTunes music service, the existence of
which caused much of the trouble in the first place. The Beatles
are one of the few remaining major bands to have resisted online
music sales so far.
The Beatles formed Apple in 1968 and released
their subsequent albums, such as Abbey Road and the white album, on
it. Apple Computer was formed in 1976 when Jobs and Steve Wozniak
built computers in a Californian garage.
The first legal scuffle between the two
companies came in 1978, when record company Apple Corps sued Apple
Inc for trade mark infringement. In 1981 Jobs and Apple Inc paid
$80,000 but, more importantly, agreed never to enter the music
business.
When Apple's Macintosh computers began to
include multimedia software in the 1980s, including music
production software of a kind, Apple Corps came calling again,
claiming that Apple was now in the music business.
In 1991 it paid up again, this time paying the
record company $26.5 million for the right to use the Apple name
and logo for selling computers and software, while the record
company retained it for selling music.
When Apple launched the iPod in 2001 and, more
particularly, iTunes in 2003, another clash was inevitable. Apple
Corps again took Apple Inc to task over its claims of trade mark
infringement.
The High Court in England ruled last May that
the Apple name and logo applied to the iTunes store itself and not
the music, and that Apple Inc had not infringed the Beatles
company's rights.
The two sides have now come to a deal, with
each paying its own legal costs. Investment bank Piper Jaffray
estimates that Apple Inc will have paid the record company between
$50 million and $100 million for the trade mark rights in a deal
which could finally end the disputes between the two companies.
