Not long ago, the case of Columbia Pictures Inc. v. Bunnell , 245 F.R.D. 443 (C.D. Cal 2007), caused a stir among watchers of electronic discovery by deeming a computer's random access memory discoverable.
Commentators observed not only that so-called "ephemeral" data -- data of a short-lived or transitory nature -- had become fair game in litigation, but that a federal court, in a discovery order it described as "quotidian," required a litigant to record this kind of data and then produce it to its opponent.
Thus far, the ruling in Columbia Pictures , handed down in June 2007, has stood alone and has not been followed in any published decisions. This raises the question: Is ephemeral data such as RAM just a blip on the screen? The answer is probably not. With technology on the march, the issues raised in Columbia Pictures may well become quotidian.
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