Am I selling my data or licensing it? Do I still own it?

Most programs describe a license: you keep your records and ownership, and grant a buyer rights to use a copy. Its scope, duration, exclusivity and what happens to the copy afterwards decide what you give up. As of October 2026, the outright purchases Data Licensing Report found are at wind-down services and in bankruptcy sales. SimpleClosure’s terms, for example, say an acquisition passes all right, title and interest to the buyer.

How does each company describe the deal?

Every business-data program below except Nyne says you keep ownership of the original records; Nyne leaves ownership to the agreement. They differ on exclusivity and length, which is where the rights you give up are decided. As of October 2026:

Program	What it says you keep	Exclusivity	Length
Appen	“It does not transfer ownership of your underlying data” (source)	Not published	Not published
Corpus	“You are licensing a copy, not surrendering the original” (source)	Non-exclusive (source)	Not published
License My Data	“Ownership never transfers” (source)	Your choice: non-exclusive, or an exclusive buyout	Not published
micro1	“Companies retain ownership of their underlying data” (source)	Not published	Not published
Miro Advisory	Your “systems, records and intellectual property” (source)	Negotiated	Negotiated
Nyne	Ownership “governed by your agreement” (source)	Not published	Not published
Polyshares	“You keep the business and the data” (source)	“exclusive by default unless we agree otherwise”	“A defined term”; all four published case studies are perpetual (source)
Replay	“Your data, your source code, your trademarks and your IP” (source)	Not published	Not published
Scrimdata	“You own the data before, during, and after” (source)	“Non-exclusive by default. Exclusivity is your choice”	Not published
Sell My Business Data	“your originals and ownership” (source)	Not published	Not published
Telegraph Lab (affiliated with this site)	“its original files and ownership” (source)	“must be explicitly agreed”	Not published
Troveo	“Ownership never transfers” (source)	Time-limited, with exit terms in the agreement	Not published

“Not published” means Data Licensing Report found no statement on the program’s public pages when it checked in October 2026. Mercor and Scale AI publish no license, exclusivity or ownership terms. Handshake AI says data is used for “model training and evaluation only”, and that payment depends on accepting its data licensing terms, which are not public. Avelence, which introduces companies to the firms that license their data, says “permitted uses and exclusivity depend on the agreement” with that partner.

When is it a sale rather than a license?

When the agreement transfers ownership instead of granting rights to use. SimpleClosure, which handles closing startups’ assets, offers both, and its terms say that on an acquisition “all right, title, and interest in and to the Digital Assets vests in the acquiring entity”. Sunset says it buys a closing startup’s dataset itself and then licenses it onward (Sunset).

The words in the agreement tell you which you have. “Assign”, “transfer”, “sell” and “all right, title and interest” usually signal a sale; “license”, “grant” and “permitted use” usually signal a license. Under a license you keep the original and can keep using it: Polyshares says you keep “the right to keep using it exactly as before”.

Most of these programs license your data onward to AI labs, so the license you grant them has to allow that. Replay tells AI buyers it holds the rights to license data onward (Replay), and Polyshares says it “controls where the material goes and does not disclose which labs receive it”. Owning the original does not give you a say over those onward licenses unless the agreement does.

What happens to the copy when the deal ends?

Whatever the agreement says, and only some programs publish anything about it:

• Appen says retention periods and deletion terms are “agreed in writing before extraction begins”.
• Nyne sets retention and deletion per engagement, “with deletion and suppression workflows. No indefinite use outside the agreed scope.”
• micro1 says data is retained only for agreed periods, and its application page says original datasets are deleted after processing (micro1, application).
• Scrimdata puts retention and deletion in the contract alongside scope and price (Scrimdata).
• Replay says that if you decide not to continue, your data is deleted on request (Replay). That covers a deal that does not go ahead, not one that ends.

If the license is perpetual, as in each of Polyshares’ published case studies, it does not end, and there is no point at which the copy comes back.

Ask for these in writing:

1. An end date, or a plain statement that the license is perpetual.
2. What must be deleted, and by when: your raw export, the provider’s working copies, and the de-identified dataset.
3. Whether copies already supplied to the provider’s customers must be deleted too, and whether models already trained on the data may still be used.
4. Written confirmation once deletion is done.
5. Which promises continue after the license ends, such as confidentiality and a ban on re-identifying anyone.

Exclusive or not? What’s the difference to me?

An exclusive license stops you licensing the same records to anyone else for as long as it lasts; a non-exclusive one leaves you free to license them again. Programs start from different defaults: Polyshares is exclusive by default, Scrimdata and Corpus are non-exclusive, and Telegraph Lab says exclusivity “must be explicitly agreed”. Miro Advisory’s FAQ puts it as “Scope, duration and exclusivity are negotiated, not assumed”.

What exclusivity costs you depends on four things in the agreement:

• Length. Exclusive and perpetual means the records it covers can only ever earn from one buyer. Troveo says its exclusivity is time-limited and that its agreement “includes clear exit terms”; it does not publish the length or the terms.
• Scope. Exclusivity over your 2015 to 2025 email is narrower than exclusivity over “all operational data”.
• Future records. Replay says new data a business produces “follows the same path, and continues to pay you”. Check whether an exclusive license reaches records you have not created yet.
• Price. An exclusive license should be priced as one. How exclusivity and the payment model fit together is in Upfront payment or revenue share?

Exclusivity before anything is priced is a separate question, covered in how data licensing offers work.

Can I sell it to more than one company?

Yes, if each license is non-exclusive, or if an exclusive one covers only part of what you hold. Polyshares’ answers page describes it this way: “A bounded, non-exclusive license also leaves the company free to license the same record again as it grows, to Polyshares or elsewhere”. Its data-handling page says its licenses are exclusive by default, so read which one your agreement uses.

There are two ways to reach several buyers:

• License the records yourself to each buyer on non-exclusive terms. Each deal is a separate agreement, export and payment.
• License them to an agent that resells, which then sells to several buyers and shares the revenue with you. Troveo works this way, and it says about 95 percent of its licensors across all its programs, not only business data, signed exclusively.

Exclusivity can also be split by system. For example, a contractor could license its email archive exclusively to one buyer and keep its job-management records free for another, if the first agreement defines the exclusive scope by system and years.

What am I promising in the contract? Could they come back and sue me?

You are promising facts about your records, and if one proves wrong, the indemnity and liability clauses decide what you owe. Published terms show what these promises look like:

• SimpleClosure’s terms ask sellers to state that they are “the sole and lawful owner” or hold all necessary rights, that the assets do not infringe anyone’s intellectual property, privacy or contractual rights, that required notices and consents have been obtained from individuals whose personal information is in them, and that they are free of liens. Sellers also indemnify SimpleClosure for claims arising from a breach of those statements or a missing consent.
• FileYield’s terms require sellers to warrant that they own the data or hold the rights, licenses and consents needed to sell it (FileYield).
• Replay says “You’ll be asked to represent that the data is yours to license”, acknowledges that it is “almost impossible to verify whether a decade of docs include IP you’re not allowed to share,” and says it caps your exposure “to just the fees paid.”

The law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz wrote on October 1, 2026 that the agreement should “allocate privacy risk, and address what happens if something goes wrong”, and that privacy and security representations deserve careful attention. These are the sections to read:

Section	What it covers	What to check
Representations and warranties	Your statements that you own or may license the records, and gave the notices and got the consents required	Whether they are limited to what you know, and to the records actually delivered
Indemnity	Who pays if a statement is wrong or someone else claims the data	Whether it is capped, and whether the buyer indemnifies you for its own misuse or a re-identification
Limitation of liability	The most either side can owe	The cap (Replay states fees paid) and which claims sit outside it
Use restrictions	What the buyer may do with the copy	Permitted uses, recipients, resale and a ban on re-identification, which License My Data says its licensees accept by contract
Survival	Which promises outlast the license	How long your warranties last, and whether confidentiality and deletion duties continue

Whether a particular promise is safe for your company depends on your own contracts and records, and that is a question for your own lawyer. Is it legal to sell company emails and records? lists the agreements to gather first, and What’s the catch? covers the other risks you keep. If the license pays over time, How long until I get paid? shows when. The guide compares these terms with price, and the offer benchmark walks through an offer you hold term by term.