Saving the Data

U.S. businesses are going to have to change the way they handle electronically stored information when new federal rules go into effect Dec. 1.

The new regulations, adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in April, say businesses must be able to quickly find such data when required by the federal court.

That means that every electronic document stored by businesses—e-mail, instant messages, financials, voice mail and all text and graphical documents—must be easily retrievable.

"Now, the world isn't going to change on Dec. 2," Andrew Cohen, senior legal counsel for data storage giant EMC, in Hopkinton, Mass., told eWeek.

"Lawyers aren't going to look at their caseloads and say, 'Well, this changes my whole approach.' But [the new regulations] will become a model for the way litigation is carried out in federal court—and eventually in state courts."