Apple is being accused of pirating some huge classic songs

Music companies accusing people of copyright infringement isn't anything new, but when it accuses Apple it's worth taking note. Four Jays Music Company has filed a new lawsuit claiming that Apple and a further three defendants pirated material that the plaintiff owns the rights to.

All of the music seems to be from popular artists from years past, including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, and Frank Sinatra. But according to Four Jays Music Company, Apple nor the other defendants ever obtained a license that would allow them to use the music in question.

As Patently Apple notes, Apple contracted two companies called Cleopatra and Orchard to provide a catalog of music to be used in the iTunes store. But those companies didn't have the rights to do so.

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.

To make matters worse, the lalwsuit also claims that Apple knew that it had infringed upon copyright for years.

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.

Those interested in the full rundown can read the lawsuit on Scribd.