Apple Inc. and Apple Corps reach agreement

After years of legal battles, huge monetary settlements and more legal battles, it appears that the dispute between Apple Corps, the company founded by the Beatles in 1968 as an attempt at "Western Communism" and Apple Inc., the house that the Mac built, is finally over. This marks the third such agreement between the two companies and while the previous two settlements contained provisions for Apple Inc. to stay out of the music industry, the latest agreement sees Apple Corps ceding all of the trademarks related to "Apple" to Jobs and Co. As per the agreement, Apple Inc. will in turn license certain trademarks back to Apple Corps. While Apple Corps once boasted film, retail and even electronics divisions, the company now operates primarily as a licensing firm for The Beatles's intellectual property trademarks. However, that's not to say that Apple Inc. didn't have to drop a massive sum of cash in order to finally purchase full rights to the Apple name--the previous settlements in 1978 and 1991 netted $80,000 and $26.5 million, respectively, for Apple Corps, so a settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars is certainly not out of the question (the terms of the settlement, however, remain confidential). Regardless of cost, Mr. Jobs seems satisfied: "We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future." The two companies finally setting their decades-old spat may well have made peace-lover John Lennon proud but it still doesn't answer the question on everyone's mind: When can I buy a remastered copy of The Magical Mystery Tour on iTunes?

For more on the settlement:
- see this TUAW article