Your application manages the links among features, rules, and work items as you develop your application. Whether the links are copied or removed depends on the changes that you make to a rule.
When you create a rule by copying or specializing another rule, the links from the original rule to work items are copied to the new rule. Features that are linked to the original rule are not updated with a link to the new rule.
When you delete, withdraw, or block a rule, the links to work items are removed. The links from features to the rule are also removed.