Apple Corps -- owned by former Beatles Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison -- had accused the US company of breaching a trademark peace agreement between the firms by promoting music products.

The verdict could cost Apple Corps more than three million pounds (5.6 million dollars, 4.4 million euros). They agreed to pay Apple Computer's costs, put at around two million pounds.

Judge Edward Mann granted The Beatles' firm permission to appeal against his ruling and refused a request from Apple Computer's lawyer Lord Anthony Grabiner for a 1.5-million-pound interim payment.

"With great respect to the trial judge, we consider he has reached the wrong conclusion," said Apple Corps manager Neil Aspinall after the ruling.

"We felt that during the course of the trial we clearly demonstrated just how extensively Apple Computer had broken the agreement.

"We will accordingly be filing an appeal and putting the case again to the Court of Appeal."

Apple Corps' solicitor Nicholas Valner added: "This is a particularly disappointing decision. The judgment is curious.

"So much of what the judge says is right. It will be noted that he rejected pretty much every argument advanced by (lawyer) Lord Grabiner QC for Apple Computer."

The dispute centred on Apple Computer's revolutionary iTunes music store website, which allows users of its iPod to download and save thousands of songs.

The Beatles' company was seeking financial damages and court orders to stop Apple Computer using the "apple" marks in connection with the iTunes website.

The rock-and-roll legends' multimedia corporation sued the US firm over the use of the Apple name and logo in a spat which goes back to the 1980s.

London-based Apple Corps claimed the computer company was in breach of a 1991 agreement which forbade each side entering the other's exclusive "field of use" of the Apple name.

The deal between the companies gave Apple Corps the exclusive right to use "apple" marks for the record business, the firm's lawyer Geoffrey Vos told the court in March.

The US company had exclusive rights to do so for the computer, telecommunications and data processing industry.

The peace had held between the two firms until the iPod was launched in 2001. The 1991 agreement was arguably drawn up to cover compact discs and tapes, well ahead of technological developments such as iTunes.

Vos told the court that calling the iPod download system a mere electronic device was a "perversion" of the constraints in the 1991 deal.

He claimed Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs had said that downloading music from the Internet was the same as buying a record nowadays.

Vos argued that the US firm had violated the deal by selling music online.

He showed the judge, a self-confessed iPod owner, how to download from the iTunes website.

He chose the 1978 hit "Le Freak" by Chic, which filled the courtroom with disco beats as he showed how many times the "apple" logo appeared on the screen as he carried out the download.

Apple Corps is represented by a green Granny Smith apple, while the computer firm's original logo was a multi-coloured, striped apple with a chunk missing. Its new logo is grey.

Apple Computer is the market leader for music downloads, with around three million songs being downloaded each day from its iTunes service.

It was founded in 1976 by Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the first generation of Macintosh computers was born in 1984.

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