Californian federal judge Paul Grewal has sanctioned Samsung for destroying evidence that makes up part of a case it's fighting against Apple over patent infringement. The judge explained that Samsung had "failed to prevent the destruction of relevant evidence" in the form of company emails and went on to suggest that they could have done more to preserve them.

It's a blow for Samsung, with them forcing to explain its company policy of deleting all company email after just two weeks. The judge pointed out that Samsung continued to delete emails even after it knew about the litigation.

It's not clear if the decision to keep deleting messages was intentional. Either way, the case is going to go on for a long time from the looks of it. [Wall Street Journal]