Edible Apple

Apple and Eminem’s publishing company, Eight Mile Style LLC, were unable to come to a settlement agreement yesterday regarding the sale of 93 Eminem songs on iTunes which Eight Mile LLC alleges Apple never had authorization to sell digitally.

A non-jury trial is expected to begin today before U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor.

Apple’s defense is that Aftermath Records owns the rights to Eminem’s songs, and that a deal was struck with them.  Eminem and co., however, argue that Aftermath was never given the right to negotiate the sale of songs as it relates to digital downloads.  In total, Eight Mile LLC alleges that Apple has wrongly accumulated over $2.5 million in an-authorized song downloads.

This, of course, isn’t the first time that Eminem and Apple have been at the center of a legal dispute together. Back in 2004, Eminem sued Apple for using his song “Lose Yourself” in an iPod Silhouette commercial without his permission.  Well to be fair, Apple asked for Eminem’s permission, he said no, and Apple went ahead and used the song anyhow.  The lawsuit was subsequently settled for an undisclosed sum, but with Eminem’s lawyer at the time mentioning that a typical Eminem endorsement runs at about $10 million, you can bet that the agreed upon settlement was pretty sizeable.