Cook's email to employees after Apple win leaks online

It is clearly the biggest news of the day, an end of sorts to one longstanding patent battle between two technology heavyweights - Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics. Apple won after what has been one long battle and Samsung Electronics is to cough up compensation to the tune of a staggering $1.05 billion. It is a big win for the company, and on the Internet is circulating a copy of the email that Apple chief, Tim Cook sent out to his employees. Incidentally, Cook also completes his one year on the job today. In the e-mail that Cook sent out to his employees after the big win, he wrote how that lawsuit has been about values, more importantly than patents or money. He adds that the lawsuit came into being only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying Apple's work. 

Apple wins longstanding patent battle against Samsung

The e-mail, as displayed on 9to5Mac, reads, 

"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"

In a decision that the jury came up with on Friday, it had been asserted that Samsung infringed on Apple's technologies which it used to create its iPhone and iPad. Samsung, however, is expected to appeal on the decision. In what would also come as a blow to Samsung's ambitions in the U.S., Apple has also demanded in its appeal that Samsung withdraw its most popular smartphones and tablets from the U.S. market.

Apple and Samsung were friends once and share a complex relationship as Samsung is a key components supplier to Apple. Only recently was it reported that a British judge in his ruling affirmed that Samsung's Galaxy tablets did not infringe Apple's designs for the iPad, because they were "not as cool". It was Judge Colin Birss, who noted in his High Court judgment that the Galaxy tablets were part of the 'same same family as the Apple design' when seen from the front. However, Samsung products, he noted, were "very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back".

The chief executives of the two companies also met recently in what essentially had been a court-directed mediation. The court-directed mediation at the time was being perceived as an attempt to help the companies iron out all their differences and was to be overseen by U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero.