Enterprise Evidence Repository

• US 20110320480A1
• Filed: 06/29/2010
• Published: 12/29/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kisin, Roman, Raynaud-Richard, Pierre
• Granted Patent: US 8,832,148 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/769
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/10 File systems; File servers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/00 Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/18 Legal services

Abstract

A controller is configured to generate and propagate instructions to an execution agent which, in turn, is configured to collect and deposit collected artifacts into a repository. Write access to a location in the repository for collected artifacts that are to be deposited into a specified location is granted to the execution agent. Once the execution agent deposits the collected artifacts in the specified location in the repository, a summary of collected artifacts is propagated to the controller. The controller manages appropriate levels of access to the collected artifacts, while the repository enforces the level of access. The controller can grant read only access to the collected artifacts or it can allow for controlled changes to be made to the metadata associated with the collected artifact. An agent processes the data and generates additional metadata that can be associated with the collected artifacts and then saved in the repository. A system can have more than one repository, where the controller allocates storage in an appropriate repository and issues instructions to the execution agent with the location in an appropriate repository. The summary of the actual collections is then propagated to the controller from the repositories.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing collected artifacts in an electronic discovery system (EDMS), comprising the steps of:

providing an evidence repository for managing collected artifacts along with contextual data and metadata;

providing a collection agent configured to perform artifact collection and to deposit collected artifacts to said repository; and

providing an EDMS configured to manage electronic discovery workflow in an enterprise and to issue and propagate instructions to said collection agent.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said evidence repository further comprises a transient storage area (staging area) to which collected artifacts are deposited.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein said EDMS is configured to control space allocation in said transient storage area for upcoming collections.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

said evidence repository further providing a content management module configured to provide advanced collaboration capabilities, extensible metadata, and access control.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising the step of:

propagating eDiscovery process metadata from said EDMS to said evidence repository.

6. The method of claim 5, said eDiscovery process metadata comprising any of the following data:

collection target, reasons for collection, collected by, collected on, collection plan, and legal case.

7. The method of claim 6, said eDiscovery process metadata further comprising external properties.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein said EDMS is configured to manage access control.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising the step of:

propagating access control rules from said EDMS to said evidence repository.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising the step of:

granting a specific data processing tool read access to a selected subset of said collected artifacts in said evidence repository, as defined by said EDMS.

11. The method of claim 10, said data processing tool comprising an early case assessment (ECA) tool.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of:

said data processing tool writing application specific metadata associated with said collected artifacts into said evidence repository.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

providing a data exporting tool that is granted read access to said collected artifacts in said evidence repository to extract collected artifacts and metadata and to package said extracted collected artifacts and metadata for outside review.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising the step of:

extracting a summary of said extracted collected artifacts and metadata, said summary comprising any of the following characteristics of an export;

date, purpose, description, volume in MB, estimated number of pages, number of documents overall and broken down by document type and by person or data source.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the step of:

propagating said export metadata from said evidence repository to said EDMS.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising the step of:

propagating said export metadata from said evidence repository to a discovery cost forecasting system (DCF).

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

automatically issuing collection instructions for IT and integrating said collection instructions with an overall discovery workflow.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein said instructions comprise any of a unique location of a collection staging area for a given legal case, a collection plan, a collection log, a data source, and a custodian.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

issuing automated preservation and collection instructions and propagating said instructions to an automated or semi-automated collection tool.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein said collection instructions comprise a secure token for identifying collection parameters, wherein said secure token is configured to automatically validate integrity of a collection, including chain of custody.

21. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

propagating collected artifacts and metadata for self-collections from said EDMS to said evidence repository.

22. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

collecting artifacts and metadata for self-collections directly into said evidence repository.

23. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

migrating existing collections including artifacts and metadata stored in said EDMS into said evidence repository.

24. The method of claim 2, further comprising the step of:

ingesting collected artifacts from a staging area into said evidence repository.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprising the step of:

automatically collating collected artifacts and automatically associating metadata that has already been propagated to said evidence repository with said collected artifacts as appropriate.

26. The method of claim 24, further comprising the step of:

ingesting additional metadata along with collected artifacts from a staging area, said additional metadata comprising any of a chain of custody, document locations, and process metadata for collected artifacts.

27. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

reusing artifacts collected for a first case in the context of one or more other cases.

28. The method of claim 27, further comprising the step of:

reusing any of location, process, export, and metadata generated by an early case assessment (ECA) tool and other analytical tools across a plurality of cases.

29. A computer implemented method for storing and accessing collected artifacts in an electronic discovery system (EDMS), comprising the steps of:

providing a plurality of evidence repositories for managing collected artifacts along with contextual data and metadata;

providing a collection agent configured to perform artifact collection and to deposit collected artifacts to said repositories; and

providing an EDMS configured to manage electronic discovery workflow in an enterprise and to issue and propagate instructions to said collection agent.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising the step of:

managing and propagating access control individual repositories with said EDMS.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising the step of:

allocating any of a case, collection plan, and individual collection logs to individual evidence repositories.

32. The method of claim 30, further comprising the step of:

using dedicated repositories for collections from custodians and data sources that reside in jurisdictions having high levels of restriction on cross-border data transfers.

33. The method of claim 30, further comprising the step of:

using dedicated repositories with increased security for confidential cases or cases having sensitive data.

34. The method of claim 30, further comprising the step of:

said EDMS issuing collection instructions that include location of a staging area directory that is specific to a selected evidence repository.

35. The method of claim 30, further comprising the step of:

said EDMS providing legal users with visibility into an overall collection process.

36. The method of claim 35, further comprising the step of:

notifying said EDMS when exceptions occur in staging area directories, and periodically providing a summary of a data deposition process.

37. The method of claim 35, further comprising the step of:

notifying said EDMS when exceptions occur during data ingestion and in said evidence repository, and providing a summary said data ingestion process.

38. The method of claim 35, further comprising the step of:

notifying said EDMS when exceptions occur in data processing tools, and providing a summary of data indexing or processing.

39. A computer readable medium for storing program instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to implement a method for storing and accessing collected artifacts in an electronic discovery system (EDMS), comprising the steps of:

providing an evidence repository for managing collected artifacts along with contextual data and metadata;

providing a collection agent configured to perform artifact collection and to deposit collected artifacts to said repository; and

providing an EDMS configured to manage electronic discovery workflow in an enterprise and to issue and propagate instructions to said collection agent.

40. An apparatus for storing and accessing collected artifacts in an electronic discovery system (EDMS), comprising:

an evidence repository for managing collected artifacts along with contextual data and metadata;

a collection agent configured to perform artifact collection and to deposit collected artifacts to said repository; and

an EDMS configured to manage electronic discovery workflow in an enterprise and to issue and propagate instructions to said collection agent.