Data licensing glossary
The terms you will meet when licensing company data to AI buyers, defined from the seller’s side.
A
- Agent trajectory
- A recorded sequence of steps an AI agent or a person takes to complete a task, such as the clicks, messages and decisions behind resolving a ticket. Some buyers license trajectories to train agents. Learn more
- Aggregator
- A company that buys or licenses data from many sellers and relicenses it to several buyers, usually paying the seller a fixed amount. Learn more
- Anonymization
- Transforming data so individuals cannot be re-identified by reasonable means. Under laws such as Brazil’s LGPD, only data that meets this bar falls outside data protection law.
- Approval window
- The period a buyer has to review and accept delivered data before payment is due. Get it in writing; open-ended windows delay payment. Learn more
- Authorized officer
- A person with legal authority to bind the company, such as a CEO, COO or general counsel. Data licenses and referral consent should be signed by one.
B
- Buyer-paid advisor
- An intermediary that is free to the seller because buyers pay it a referral fee when a deal closes. QuoteMyData works this way and discloses it. Learn more
C
- CCPA sale
- Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, transferring personal information for value can be a sale, unless the data is de-identified to the statutory standard. Learn more
- Consent record
- Written evidence that the company agreed to be introduced to a buyer, or that a visitor agreed to cookies. Both should be dated and specific.
- Consumer privacy ombudsman
- A person a bankruptcy court can appoint to review the privacy impact of selling personal data as part of a bankruptcy sale.
D
- Data licensing agreement
- The contract that grants a buyer the right to use a defined dataset for defined purposes. It sets scope, exclusions, exclusivity, de-identification, approval, payment and deletion. Learn more
- De-identification
- Removing or transforming names, emails and other identifiers before data is used. Stronger when done inside the seller’s environment and checked on a sample. Learn more
- Defunct-company track
- A buyer program for companies that have shut down, where the remaining Slack, email, docs and code archives are licensed after wind-down. Learn more
E
- Evaluation data
- Data used to test how well an AI model or agent performs a task, rather than to train it. Often licensed on narrower terms.
- Exclusive license
- A license that restricts other licensing within an agreed scope, purpose and term. Define those boundaries and compare the rights surrendered with the payment; there is no universal price multiplier. Learn more
- Export route
- How data leaves your systems: an admin export, a read-only snapshot or a live connector. Some tool terms, such as Slack’s API terms, restrict certain routes for AI training. Learn more
G
- Global Privacy Control
- A browser signal that tells websites the visitor opts out of the sale or sharing of their personal information. Several US states treat it as a binding opt-out.
N
- Non-exclusive license
- A license that lets you license the same data to other buyers. Lower price per deal, more total upside if several buyers want your data.
O
- Operational data
- The records of how a company actually works: chat, email, tickets, docs, project and CRM history. The core of most company data licenses. Learn more
P
- PII
- Personally identifiable information: names, emails, phone numbers, addresses and anything else that identifies a person. Removed or transformed before data is licensed.
R
- Raw-data deletion
- A contract term requiring the buyer to delete the original, identified export once de-identified outputs are delivered, often with a signed certificate.
- Referral fee
- A fee a buyer pays to whoever introduced a company that signs a deal. Paid by the buyer, not deducted from the seller’s offer when structured properly. Learn more
- RL environment
- A simulated workplace, built from real operational data, where AI agents practice tasks through reinforcement learning. A major reason labs buy company data.
S
- Scoping
- The buyer’s review of your systems, size, history and exclusions before it makes an offer. Typically one to three weeks.
- Seller-paid broker
- An intermediary paid by the seller, usually a share of proceeds, acting as the seller’s agent. An alternative to buyer-paid advisors. Learn more
- SOC 2 Type II
- An independent audit of a company’s security controls over a period of time. A useful baseline; ask for the auditor, the report period and the exceptions.
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