A redistribution licence is a data licence that allows the licensee to pass licensed data, in full or in part, to third parties, typically its own customers. It differs from an internal-use licence, which keeps data inside the licensee's organisation, and from an embedding licence, which lets data appear inside a product.
Three uses of licensed data
| Licence | Who receives the data | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Internal use | The licensee's own staff | An analyst queries hiring data in the fund's warehouse |
| Embedding | Users of the licensee's product, as displayed content | A sales tool shows the technologies a company runs on its account page |
| Redistribution | Third parties, as data | A data platform supplies licensed tables, or a subset, to its own customers |
The boundary between embedding and redistribution is drawn in the agreement, not in the product. What usually decides it is whether a recipient can take the data away as rows, files or an API response, or can only see it displayed.
What to settle before signing
- Scope: the datasets, tables and fields covered, and the set of companies.
- Form: raw rows, derived scores, or both.
- Recipients: named customers or any customer, and whether they may pass the data on.
- Attribution: how the source is credited downstream.
- Versions: which label and schema versions recipients receive, and how change is announced.
- End of term: what happens to data already delivered.
In Fokals data
Fokals data is licensed by written agreement for internal use, embedding in a product or redistribution. There is no public price list. Three properties of the data matter to a redistributor:
- Daily and weekly tables are written once and not revised, so a period you have passed on does not change under your customers.
- Labels and scores carry named, frozen label versions, and a breaking change ships as a new version with at least 90 days' notice, which gives you time to tell your own customers.
- Web Traffic rows carry attribution text, set out in the data dictionary, which a redistributor passes on to its own customers.
Bulk exports come with a manifest naming sources, period, label versions and licence, which is a record of what each delivery was. See the data licensing page and the use case on redistributing company data under licence.
Related terms
- Data licence: the general term for an agreement that sets how data may be used.
- Data manifest: the file that records what a delivery contained and under which terms.
- Data provenance: where each record came from, which attribution depends on.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a redistribution licence and an internal-use licence?
An internal-use licence lets only the licensee's own staff use the data. A redistribution licence lets the licensee pass the data, or part of it, to other organisations, usually its customers. The second is the wider right, so agreements usually spell out the datasets covered, the form in which data may be passed on and the attribution required.
Can I resell licensed company data to my customers?
Only if your licence allows redistribution. Showing data inside your product is embedding, which is a separate right, and letting customers export it as files or through an API usually moves the use into redistribution. Read how the agreement defines recipients, form and further transfer, and settle in writing any use it leaves open.
Does showing derived scores to customers count as redistribution?
Agreements treat derived data differently, so the answer is in the text of yours. A score computed from licensed rows is derived data. Displaying it is usually closer to embedding, while handing over the rows behind it is redistribution. Settle the wording for scores, aggregates and exports before you build the feature.