Patent ID: 8112453

Claim:
A method for obtaining information responsive to a legal discovery request directed at an enterprise, wherein the legal discovery request is selected from the group consisting of a document subpoena directed to the enterprise or a request for production of documents served on the enterprise in litigation, wherein a plurality of databases is associated with the enterprise and potentially include information responsive to the legal discovery request, said plurality of databases including a plurality of structured databases and at least one unstructured database, said method comprising: (a) providing a plurality of taxonomies, each of which describes a structure of one of the structured databases; (b) providing an ontology, based at least in part on the taxonomies, that describes data relationships between the plurality of databases associated with the enterprise; (c) identifying a native application that is configured to access at least one but not all of the plurality of databases associated with the enterprise; (d) modifying the native application to include search functionality for accessing all of the plurality of databases associated with the enterprise; (e) receiving from a user, via the modified native application, a request to search the plurality of databases associated with the enterprise for information responsive to the legal discovery request; (f) using information included in the request, the ontology and the taxonomies to search the plurality of databases associated with the enterprise; (g) presenting a list of search results responsive to the search request to the user with the modified native application; and (h) in response to a user selection of a search result from the list, automatically launching an application required to view the selected search result if the modified native application lacks functionality required to display the selected search result.