Four Jays Music Company has filed a copyright lawsuit against Apple and three other defendants. The company claims that the defendants have pirated copyrighted musical works that they own the rights to. The pirated musical works includes music by recorded by the most prominent jazz and popular artists of all time, including Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday, Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Dean Martin, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, John Coltrane, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Sarah Vaughan to name only a few. These monumental works of art are, quite literally, national treasures.

Defendants have failed to obtain any license that would authorize them to reproduce, distribute, or sell the recordings of the Subject Compositions identified

Apple specifically selected and contracted with Orchard to provide its digital music catalog to be sold in its iTunes store on negotiated financial terms.   Apple reproduced  and  distributed  pirated  recordings  of  the  Subject Compositions it received  from Cleopatra and/or Orchard  as permanent  downloads among other types of digital phonorecord deliveries.

Orchard unlawfully reproduced and distributed the pirated recordings of the Subject Compositions and distributed them to Apple, at the direction of Cleopatra, and unlawfully authorized Apple's making of digital phonorecord  deliveries in the iTunes store, at Cleopatra's direction.

Finally, Apple has had knowledge of its own infringing conduct and that of Cleopatra and Orchard for several years and have continued to work with them and make digital phonorecord deliveries and other reproductions and distributions of the pirated recordings of the Subject Compositions that Cleopatra and Orchard provide and/or were recklessly indifferent or willfully blind to their own infringing conduct.

Further, Apple has willfully failed to employ adequate human resources, screening mechanisms, or  used of  digital fingerprinting technology to detect unlawfully  duplicate  recordings  in  their  stores  that  it  routinely  uses  for  other services, for example, ''scan and match."

For more details of this lawsuit, read the full complaint before the court found in the SCRIBD document below, courtesy of Patently Apple.

   Four Jays Music Company v Apple Inc., Cleopatra Records Et Al - Copyright Infringement Lawsuit by Jack Purcher on Scribd

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