US Safe Harbor Not Safe From EU Court Ruling

A major European court has just pulled the rug out from under nearly 5,000 US companies, snatching away the relative business certainty of the Data Transfer Safe Harbor, and maybe the safety of standard contract clauses and binding corporate rules as well. Now a company must meet the specified rules of each EU country in which it collects relevant data.

Right now, the only way to be certain that your company is meeting its requirements for data processing is to manage servers within the EU so that data does not pass into the United States. Realistically, it is likely to take many months at least for EU member countries to develop their own rules on this matter, so it is unlikely that previously safe-harbor certified U.S. businesses will be attacked right away by the EU data agencies. Keep watching this space as Womble Carlyle will update you as the new rules roll out.