London, March 30:

It was an icon of the 60s taking a bite out of a defining image of the 21st century: the Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps, yesterday claimed the US computer giant Apple ‘flagrantly violated’ an agreement not to use its logo to sell music.

Seeking millions of pounds Sterling in damages and an injunction that would wipe the apple trademark from the iTunes Music Store, Apple Corps, still owned by the former Beatles and their heirs, claimed at the high court in London that Apple Computer Inc broke a $26.5 million settlement in which the company founded by Steve Jobs agreed not to use its apple trademark ‘in connection with musical content’.

Neither Jobs nor Sir Paul McCartney nor Ringo Starr were present but the companies that symbolise the past and the present of popular music faced each other in a courtroom bristling with flat screens, laptops and even an iPod.