Is selling company data legal?
Licensing a company's own operating record is a normal commercial transaction. What determines whether a specific record can be licensed is ownership, what the company's customer contracts say, and whether personal information can be removed. This is a description of how these deals are structured and it is not legal advice.
In depth
The first question is ownership. A company holds two kinds of material that sit side by side and look the same. One is its own operating record, generated in the course of its own work, which belongs to the company. The other is material held on behalf of a client, usually under a master agreement that assigns ownership to the client. That second kind cannot be licensed regardless of value, and only the contracts separate the two. This is the single most common reason a promising record turns out to be unsaleable, and it is worth resolving before anything else.
The second question is what the company's customer agreements actually say. Master agreements, terms of use, and data processing addenda often contain restrictions on use and disclosure that reach further than owners remember, usually around confidentiality, permitted purpose, and whether anything can be used in aggregated or de-identified form. Many agreements expressly allow the last of these, which is the door most licensing deals go through.
The third question is whether personal information can be removed. Privacy regimes govern personal information rather than business records as such, so an operating record with identifying material stripped out sits in a different category from one that carries it. This is why anonymization happens before anything moves. No buyer with regulatory exposure will accept a record carrying personal information, so removing it is what makes the record usable in the first place.
Data broker registration regimes are generally aimed at businesses that collect and sell personal information about individuals they have no relationship with, a different activity from a company licensing its own anonymized operating record. The definitions vary by state, and a company should confirm its own position with counsel. In a Polyshares deal, we handle anonymization and paper the license with scope and permitted use written in. Confirming ownership is the one part that starts with the company, because only you hold your customer contracts.
This page describes how these transactions are ordinarily structured. It is not legal advice, and a company should have its own counsel review any license before signing.
Related questions
What happens to the data afterwards?
We anonymize it, build it into data sets, and supply AI labs. Use is bounded by the license, and we do not disclose which labs take which data.
Does Polyshares buy company data, or broker it?
We buy it. Polyshares is the counterparty on the deal. We license the data directly from the company that produced it, pay for it ourselves, and supply the AI labs. Nothing is listed anywhere and there is no third party for the company to deal with.
Which companies qualify?
Any business with real operating history. Venture backed, middle market, or founder owned. The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.
Speak with someone on the team.
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