Via his publishing companies, Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, Eminem has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit to stop five companies from making his tunes available online for cell-phone ringtones.

"This is a big business. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year," the rapper's lawyer, Howard Hertz, told the Detroit News. Hertz says the lawsuit would block the sale of any rings offered by Cellus, USA; FanMobile; Nextones.com; MyPhoneFiles and MatrixM LLC. The companies were not available for comment Wednesday.

Ringtone sales are becoming an increasingly bigger slice of the music business. A recent study from Jupiter Research claims that ringtone sales pulled in $217 million in 2004 and will reach $724 million by 2009.

The lawsuits won't stop at cell phones, however. Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, is also taking on karaoke companies spinning ill-gotten songs.

Posted by Lawren at October 6, 2005 08:25 AM | Trackbacks (0)

You Said