Headphone Company Wins $16 Million Judgement Against 50 Cent admin Wednesday, April 9, 2014 Events, Feature, Technology, The Receipt According to reports, audio headphones manufacturer, Sleek, recently received a judgement in their favor against Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. For the past year, Sleek and Jackson has been battling it out in court over whether or not the rapper stole a headphone idea. Originally, the two entered into a partnership to develop a headphone line for 50 Cent, in which he put up $1 million in cash. Somewhere in the middle of development, 50 Cent decided to use another company to produce the headphones (Sync by 50). But, Sleek says that Sync is “basically the same design, mechanically”. Jackson alleged that “certain security lapses” had allowed Sleek’s competitors to uncover their unique design, but an arbitrator found that “there was no evidence presented by Jackson that such alleged lapses … resulted in any public disclosure of any trade secret or confidential information of Sleek.” Instead, they insisted that Jackson’s team had used their knowledge of the headphones’ design to produce a similar model. In addition, Sleek claimed that Jackson and his assistants blatantly stole confidential private client information from a website Sleek developed to promote the headphones before they were produced. That website gathered 3,639 potential customers’ email addresses and other data, which “disappeared” from Sleek’s servers after Jackson’s team was given the password. “It was very valuable information,” the court papers claim, but when Sleek emailed Jackson’s team about the breach, his personal business manager Nicolee Martin wrote, “[Sleek] is onto us, LOL. They emailed and called … about the data”. (Radar Online) 50 Cent was ordered to pay Sleek $11,693,247 in damages, plus $4,488,331 in attorney’s fees.
