Data Licensing and Data Sharing

The question

You want to put your data to work outside your own walls. Perhaps an analytics partner needs it. Perhaps the dataset itself is the product, or you are pooling data in a joint venture, or a customer wants access to what its connected devices generate. All of that can create value. It can also hand over rights you will never get back, put you in breach of data protection law, or make you answer for what a partner does with the data.

So the question is how to share or license data while keeping control where it matters. And under the EU Data Act, you sometimes have no choice about sharing at all. Only the terms are yours to negotiate.

It usually starts with a request for access from a customer or partner. Or with a plan to sell or license a dataset. Or a joint project where several parties bring data. Quite often, it starts with a draft agreement from the other side that you are not sure how to read.

Our approach

A data licence is a different animal from a supply agreement. We start with four questions. Which data? For what purpose? For how long? And who owns what is created from it?

First, what can you actually license? Whether you hold a database right or a trade secret determines what you can prohibit and what you have to secure by contract. Where the Data Act applies, we identify which data you must make available to users and third parties, on FRAND terms and for reasonable compensation, and which terms the Act treats as unfair when imposed on another business.

Second, personal data. If the dataset contains any, the agreement has to set out the roles of the parties, the lawful basis, the safeguards and any limits on international transfers. We align it with your records of processing in our compliance registers, where the lawyer or your DPO reviews the entries.

Third, the draft. Document Studio builds the agreement from our clause library, in house style, and exports it to Word. Client and counterparty details come from their profiles. A lawyer finalises every draft.

Fourth, living with the contract. Once it is signed, each party's duties and rights go into our rights and obligations register: delivery windows, audit rights, notice periods, deletion on exit. A person checks each entry against the clause it came from. Reminders follow for the dates that matter.

The legal calls are the lawyer's throughout. Is this clause acceptable? What do we give, what do we hold? Our technology prepares and tracks. It does not decide.

Not every data deal is a sale, by the way. Pooling, exchange between partners and contribution to a joint venture each need their own rules on contribution, joint ownership and exit. We build the agreement around the relationship you actually have.

What you get

• A data licence or data sharing agreement that defines scope, permitted use and duration, and excludes onward use you did not agree to.
• Clear terms on who owns derived data, outputs, and models trained on the licensed data.
• Commercial terms that protect the value if the relationship goes wrong: fees or royalties, audit rights, warranties on quality and provenance, liability, consequences of misuse.
• The data protection layer: roles, safeguards, transfer limits, and a link to your processing records.
• Where the Data Act applies: access requests, trade secret safeguards, protection against unfair terms, and exit.
• An obligations register with reminders, so the contract is followed after signature.

Next step

Send us a short description of the data, what it will be used for and who is involved, or the draft you received. We will tell you what has to be settled before you sign, and which points we would negotiate first.

Schedule a meeting or write to us.