Monster Sues Beats Electronics, Founders for Fraud | Hacker News Reader

Monster Sues Beats Electronics, Founders for Fraud

wsj.com

35 pointstaylorbuley45 comments

Apparently Monster Cable has a history of suing left and right, see http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pnam=Monster%20Cable%20Pr.... or http://madmartian.com/legal/

E.g. they sued Disney for Monsters Inc, also the job posting site monster.com (which now has a link to monster cable in the footer)...

Yes Monster Cable is a very shady company, and even though they are a good source of entertainment of just how stupid some of their attacks are, this one could actually be legit.

But being such a shady company, I hope this fails and goes nowhere. Poetic justice.

Holy crap. I count over 100 cases of Monster suing people/companies so I have zero sympathy for them in this case. The real kicker on Monster Cable is that their products aren't even worth the price being outperformed by "inferior" cables costing way, way less[1][2].

[1]-http://gizmodo.com/282725/the-truth-about-monster-cable---gr...

[2]-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxfLXH6qe9w

They used to be notorious for frivolous lawsuits. I personally found it amusing how badly they got played by Beats, as documented at http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-h... and elsewhere.

My personal favorite example of absurd litigation was their threat to sue Blue Jeans Cable, documented at http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/. The response from Blue Jeans is seriously awesome.

Everyone, stop what you're doing and go read the response from Blue Jeans Cable. Its owner wrote it. He's an ex intellectual property lawyer named Kurt Denke.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/response041408.pdf

That. letter. is. glorious.

Wow, the monster link in the footer is terrible. We're they required to do that? That's BS.

Monster Cable has always been the punch line to a joke about how gullible some people are. That they are a litigious company does not surprise me in the least. I am in no position to judge whether or not Beats Music misled them, but if anyone could understand that someone might tell you something untrue in order to develop a more favourable business position, they should.

What about Monster energy drinks?

On the one hand (recalling an article that was written about this), it seems Beats was pretty shady in its dealings with Monster, or just straight up tricked them / gained their confidence. On the other hand...

> In this case, Monster's Lee argues his specific expertise was something near and dear: cables. "As a company, Monster started when Lee recognized that not all audio cables sound the same," it says. "Lee formed Monster to bring better audio cables to the market, improving the sounds of all speakers, recording consoles, and video systems."

sigh

Edit: seems the article is linked at the end from Gizmodo...

While the spirit of the company is objectionable, none of that is really objectively false. Especially with headphones, whose cables all remain analog.

The only difference between a monster cable and a generic cable is the marketing.

so... kind of like Apple.

Getting past the paywall:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://w...

> Worried about a lack of transparency at Beats after the HTC deal, Monster CEO Noel Lee also reduced his 5% stake in Beats to 1.25%.

This "lack of transparency" probably has a different meaning than the layman's one. The CEO of the former parent company used to be an insider, but no longer is. It's logical that he'd (partially) divest himself, since he no longer has as much "edge" (advantage relative to the market) in his position. In other words, he's not "worried" that Monster will suddenly do something that harms regular stakeholders, he's worried because he is now one of them.

And if you want to read the full article, just go through google search (even wsj gives full article via google)

https://www.google.fi/search?q=Monster+Sues+Beats+Electronic...

I'm having a hard time seeing how they're going to prove the Beats / HTC deal was a sham transaction.

The partnership went as far as HTC including Beats Audio and/or bundling Beats headphones with some of their phones, which sounds pretty substantive to me. Beyond that, HTC wasn't planning to sell their Beats stake back so quickly - they had to because they ran into unexpected financial trouble.

> Monster said the change-of-ownership clause triggered by the HTC deal required Monster to transfer all intellectual property to Beats, costing the company millions in lost revenue.

Does anyone have more insight into this? Why would they have structured the initial partnership with this clause in place?

It sounds like celebrities were given equity in an electronics company to promote it, and later decided to try to take control of the company when Apple expressed acquisition interest.

Can we sue them back?

$150 Monster Cables HDMI versus $15 generic HDMI cable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxfLXH6qe9w

Can you sue someone for verbally lying to you?

If I understand correctly, those typically only apply to libel/slander which does not seem to be the case here.

The answer to "Can you sue?" is always yes, yes, yes. You always can.

Fraud. A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct. . .

Can you sue someone for giving you false insider information?

"Your honor, I was trying to conspire with these guys to break the law when these guys lied to me, costing me millions! Fraud!! It's fraud I tell you!"

The judge should put them all in jail for insider trading.

Huh?

Wouldn't that be the kicker? Monster and Lee win their fraud case. Then he SEC charges Lee and Monster with insider trading and win. And the kicker would be, the fine is the $100 million won in the civil fraud case AND (the best kicker) a few years in prison for Lee.

Unfortunately, it probably won't happen.

I can't access the article. Google translate or links posted by other users don't work. HN please stop supporting paywall sites.

When title case confounds, and commas confuse. Took me a while to decypher:

Monster sues Beats Electronics founders for fraud.

Is this from the same company that owns Greater Hong Kong?

There really needs to be a rule on HN where if the site requires registration then it isn't allowed to be posted.

Given that WSJ is now the Fox News of journalism I see no reason to sign up.

Why do you say that the WSJ is the Fox News of journalism?

They have articles that aren't great but for the most part have high quality content.

I think the GP is referring to a tendency to promote a certain ideology under the guise of news, versus engaging in objective journalism.

The editorials are really heavy handed about that, however I've never thought that the news was any more influenced then any other news source.

To be fair, I thought the point of an editorial was for the author to express their opinion. [1]

[1] From dictionary.com: 'Editorial definition, an article in a newspaper or other periodical or on a website presenting the opinion of the publisher, writer, or editor'

I think the difference would be a paper that features editorials which present a diversity of views versus one that seems to editorialize consistently in support of a particular ideology.

Isn't that most news organizations these days? There's no arrangement of facts that is completely neutral. You have to lean one way.

>Isn't that most news organizations these days?

Seems so. But, I think it's a question of relative degree. For instance, the comment to which I was responding seemed to take exception to the WSJ comparison with Fox News. That's a tacit acknowledgment of a certain belief about Fox News and their degree of bias.

>There's no arrangement of facts that is completely neutral. You have to lean one way.

Well, the phrase "arrangement of facts" is a bit loaded in that it suggests a manipulation of facts, so given that premise, yeah, the objective would seemingly be to "lean". However, I don't see any reason that the mere presentation of facts must lean in any direction.

But, maybe it's just a testament to how far gone we are in this age of infotainment that it's hard to even imagine that facts can be presented without bias.

Without arrangement and bias, journalism would have no value. Searching for a random word on Google will give you a pile of facts but it's not interesting. People want to read something interesting to them. So it must be biased in a way they'll be interested in. Whether that's "dodgy company gets its comeuppance", "my favourite party does something good" or "person dies in an accident".

>Without arrangement and bias, journalism would have no value.

I don't know about that. Truth is stranger than fiction and there's plenty of interesting information to be had. Editorializing and slant can be juicy, but good writing/presentation is timeless. Likewise, curating and clearly presenting information of interest has tremendous value to many; potentially even more so when it's clear that there is no bias.

>"dodgy company gets its comeuppance", "my favourite party does something good" or "person dies in an accident".

Those could just as easily be fact-based reporting on topics of broad interest. No bias is needed in delivering such factual content to make it more compelling. For instance, replace those "headlines" with:

"Facebook loses court challenge over privacy violations"

"Republican party donates clothes to shelter"

"Princess Diana dies in car accident"

That may be most news organizations these days. You may not be able to completely escape some sort of bias. However I think this is usually used as a cop out for news organizations failing uterly at doing their jobs.

There is a big difference between subtle bias when clearly reporting the facts and deliberately pandering to and riling up your customers based on their preconceptions.

There is a big difference between going into a story to find and present facts with as little of your own bias a possible, and going into a story with the direct intent of finding a way to spin it to satisfy your audience in boost sales.

They actually are the same company, both owned by News Corp, run by one Rupert Murdoch.

The broadcast and traditional news of News Corporation split into two different companies back in 2013. Murdoch still owns significant parts of both new companies however.

Fox News seems to be the Fox News of journalism. As much as it may fail, there isn't much doubt that journalism is the thing they are failing at.

At least it's not the MSNBC of journalism.

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