Judge Changes Jury Instructions in Regard to Samsung's Deletion of Evidence in Apple Case

With the way things stood at the end of the week, Samsung was going to be painted as untrustworthy in the eyes of the jury, but a ruling by San Jose, California Judge Lucy Koh eliminated this disadvantage.

Previously, a lower magistrate had found that Samsung had erased important e-mails that would have made a difference in its patent war with Apple.

Samsung contested the decision, saying that the order to preserve the e-mails was not given equally to both companies, in addition to it coming too late in the case.

Apple will no doubt object to Judge Koh's choice, but the wording has been changed to imply that both Apple and Samsung may have erased relevant e-mails.

With this, Samsung doesn't suffer from maintaining its policy of destroying all e-mails older than two weeks.