Steve Jobs's £80m Yacht Impounded in Amsterdam

The high-tech yacht built for Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs has been impounded at the Port of Amsterdam because of a dispute over payments to its French designer, Philippe Starck.

Starck's company Ubik claims Jobs's heirs owed the designer 3m euros of a 9m euro fee for the minimalist yacht. Starck called in debt collectors, who impounded the boat.

"The boat is brand new but there is a 3m euro claim on it. The parties will have to fight it out," Jeroen Ranzijn, spokesman for the Port of Amsterdam, told the BBC.

Though Jobs commissioned Venus, which is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, he never got to use it. Built at a cost of over £80m, the 260ft-long (80m) yacht was launched in October at Aalsmeer, The Netherlands.

The yacht was first mentioned in the biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which was published shortly after Jobs's death.

"I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene [Jobs's wife] with a half-built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die," Jobs told his biographer.

Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in late 2011.

Starck and Jobs had lengthy discussions about the design, which is finished in aluminium and has a hull resembling parts of recent Apple products such as the MacBook Pro. Starck is an internationally renowned designer whose work includes everything from hotels to kitchen orange squeezers.

"These guys trusted each other, so there wasn't a very detailed contract," Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer representing Ubik, told Reuters. The boat is expected to remain in port until the lawyers representing Jobs's estate reach a settlement.