Apple takes on Eminem

Lawyers for Apple Inc have claimed that Apple was entitled to sell hip hop star Eminem’s songs on iTunes as the trial around digital rights got underway yesterday.

Eight Mile Style and affiliated company Martin Affiliated are claiming that their contract with Aftermath Records, which controls the recordings, has been breached. They say that Aftermath was not entitled to do a deal with Apple to sell Eminem’s songs over iTunes. Apple pays Aftermath US70 cents for each iTunes download, and Eight Mile gets US9.1 cents of that share as the music publisher.

Eight Mile’s lawyers claim Apple has wrongfully gained $US2.5 million and Aftermath has collected $US4 million through iTunes downloads.

But Apple lawyer Glenn Pomerantz argues that the type of technology has not been specified.

“Nowhere does it say only compact discs. Nowhere does it say… not digital downloads,” he told the court yesterday.

Minter Ellison partner Paul Zawa says when the music industry moved from LPs to CDs similar legal issues were raised.

“I wasn’t a lawyer at the time cassettes were around but I suspect similar things might have happened, he says.

He says he is surprised this has blown up because many people learnt their lessons when CDs were introduced. “Every time there is a new technology that hasn’t been thought of, people use it to try and squeeze extra royalties.”

He says it all depends on the wording of the agreement. “Unless the contract was drafted very weakly, it will include the ability to sell downloads,” he says.

He says these days contracts are drafted to make them “technology neutral”.

“In the US parties pay their own costs so there is not such a downside to commencing litigation,” he says. “So what happens is when the case fails, they renegotiate the contract.”