Apple CEO Tim Cook To Employees: Jury Sent a Loud And Clear Message That Stealing Isn’t Right

Posted by iPhoneHacks on Aug 25, 2012 | Comments (13)

Tim Cook

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook sent an email to employees after the favorable verdict in the landmark trial between the company and Samsung.

The jury found that Samsung willfully infringed on Apple’s patents and ordered Samsung to pay over $1 billion in damages to Apple.

Here’s the full text of the email sent by Tim Cook to employees, which was obtained by 9to5Mac:

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

Coincidentally, Tim Cook also finished one year as Apple’s CEO yesterday.

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  • Bullocks

    Bovine excrement! ! Etc! I cannot wait until Google slaps them. All the IP that apple has stolen and continues to use. Hypocrites, the lot of them! But more apple than any other right now.

  • Jack445

    This just hurts consumers. If Apple was being harmed, how come its the most valuable company ever?

  • Sidenine

    This makes me LOL. Apple has been notorious for stealing everyone else’s work for years. The original Mac would never have existed without Apple stealing the GUI from Xerox PARC. Oh, and apparently the iPhone interface was stolen from Sony, which was revealed in this very lawsuit. What a joke. Apple is one of the most shady and despicable companies in the world, and has now turned into a total patent troll.

    • http://twitter.com/KrajewskiCasey Casey

      Stealing the GUI? Your misleading the facts! Xerox was a miss lead company that had no idea what to do with its so call useless ideas and patents! They just let both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates take what was needed! I was and is a miss lead stupid company! Nothing was stolen! The executive team were complete morons! As for sony, sony should never white any software. They make horrible software! On top of it Apple is American!!!!!!!

      • MuscleMass

        @Casey … “miss lead”?! “white” any software?! “I was and is a miss lead stupid company”? Furthermore, Sony is still a great company and deserves to be capitalized like Xerox and Apple. What the hell, Casey? Check your spelling (and grammar) before you tell Sidenine to check his facts!

  • m Arch Tom’s on Bar N Ass

    that statement is rather written by a woman, eventually the real BOSS behind the back of TIM COOK. it’s so unreal & just a statement to “butter, jelly, rub vaseline” around the back entry of Apple staff members notoriously donkeys of the roman catholic church community .(mostly kids of criminal mind parents on this planet) someone thou, has to keep them busy with the chain & the ball on the ankle & in a cage to avoid spreading around like germs on earth & in addition, keeping them engaged for at leat 6 7 hrs a day turning them tired & then making those kids unable to make criminal plans. apple store: a not for profit organization wasting time of cheap useless individuals for it takes nothing to ask for bank details and enter data into a computer to set-up standing orders for a laptop or iphone purchase. i see more of a message like: “while You ‘re in the store pretending doing some work & having fun like chimpanzee in a lab instead, we all were in court having tea & biscuits with magistrates & samsung directors . take care, marc

  • http://www.facebook.com/QueSwanson Que Swanson

    Wow. Thank you Apple for inventing the phone.

  • Jeremy Taco Patterson

    There is a pretty big difference in Apple’s ” stealing” of ideas vs Samsung’s though: Apple takes a floundering, underwhelming idea with potential and CHANGES/IMPROVES it to fully reach its potential. It did it with the mouse, with touch interaction, with the GUI from Xerox and other “stolen” products and ideas. Without Apple’s improvements we would be years behind where we are now because the development of such things we take for granted as “given” was progressing slowly, or not at all, until Apple propelled them forward.

    Samsung stole them, did nothing in the way of advancement, and just recycled them into their devices.

    See the difference?

    • Sidenine

      No, stealing is stealing. If I stole a book, and then put a new dustjacket on it, and wrote notes all over the margins that changed the story, would you say I didn’t steal it? That’s effectively what you’re saying Apple did, and it doesn’t change the fact that they stole tech.

      • Jeremy Taco Patterson

        I disagree.

        If I find a scatterbrained clambering story about a girl, a vampire, and a werewolf and I turn it into the Twilight Series of books and movies, I deserve the credit, not the half-witted boob who started the “story” I turned into a billion-dollar empire.

        • Sidenine

          Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Take any Hollywood TV series, Lost for example. It began as a pretty lame story, but then some high profile producers changed it into an iconic series. The original writer still got paid, and credit on every show. Apple took tech and pawned it off as their own, without giving any credit to the owner. Did Samsung do the same? Sure, but Apple is no angel in all this, and that’s what they’re making themselves out to be.

  • johnathannop

    To many know it all comment. Everyone is a theft. Apple is at it prime. Everyone has some other companies technologies in there products. Sometime you got to think how you copy you own technologies. Apple want control over the price of their products meaning at any cost to ripped the consumer off. Apple want free supplies from there partner including Samsung. They are know to sue their business partner and audited their maker of their products. It seem like people been brainwash by Apple thinking their are the innovator to proved it is come out with one phone or one ipad and adding features to it to completed with nothing new. It seem you support them by giving job to the china because all their line of products is make outside the country. Shame on you. I want consumer choice not control. The theft become the good guy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/cmwade77 Chris Wade

    Stealing isn’t right?

    While this is true, what about all of the ideas that Apple stole?

    From the Jailbreak community:
    Video with the iPhone
    Apps for the iPhone
    Copy & Paste on the iPhone

    Or how about the look of iBooks, it is a direct copy of Delicious Library.
    The list goes on and on, what makes it right for them to steal these ideas and not properly compensate those who came up with the original ideas? It’s just these people don’t have the money or time to go after Apple, even though they would quite arguably have a much stronger case against Apple than Apple did against Samsung.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Apple products, but let’s not let them off the hook here.

    Of course this is where our current patent system is now broken and needs massive reform. The entire point of patents was to allow those who come up with new ideas to make the money they spent back and then some profit, then make the item’s design available for anyone to use and incorporate into their designs.