Tim Cook Sends Victory Letter After Samsung Trial Decision

Apple CEO Tim Cook wasted no time this week sending out a public victory letter in regards to the company’s patent lawsuit against Samsung. Apple won $1 billion in the lawsuit and under US law that number could be tripled to $3 billion.

The lawsuits decision claims Apple “slavishly copied” Apple’s innovations for many of its devices.

In the letter Tim Cook claims the lawsuit was about “values” and not patents or money. Cook calls the victory “an important day for Apple and innovators everywhere.”

Cook says the company which is litigious in every sense of the word “very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work” decided to bring about the lawsuit.

Here is the full letter Tim Cook sent to his employees and which was later released by an Apple spookesperson:

Team:

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.

Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work.

For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.

The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.

I am very proud of the work that each of you do.

Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens.

Tim

Apple of course has had its own history of copying competitors. The original UI concept for the Apple Mac OS for example was copied from Xerox.

Do you think Tim Cook is gloating or simply stating the facts?