# Glossary of data licensing terms

> Definitions of data license, exclusive license, provenance, de-identification, PII, 363 sale, ABC, consumer privacy ombudsman, workflow traces and other terms.

Source: https://filefunding.com/learn/glossary

Plain definitions of the terms that come up when a company licenses its records for AI training, including bankruptcy and privacy terms. General information, not legal advice.

**ABC (assignment for the benefit of creditors)**: A state-law alternative to bankruptcy in which a company assigns its assets to an assignee, who sells them and distributes the proceeds to creditors.

**363 sale**: A sale of a debtor's assets outside the ordinary course of business in a US bankruptcy, approved by the court under 11 U.S.C. § 363.

**Consumer privacy ombudsman**: A person a US bankruptcy court may appoint before approving a sale of personally identifiable information when the debtor's privacy policy restricts its transfer (11 U.S.C. § 332).

**De-identification**: Removing or replacing personal identifiers (names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, IDs) so records can't reasonably be linked back to a person. FileFunding's illustrations replace them with role labels such as [Customer].

**PII (personally identifiable information)**: Information that identifies a person directly or in combination, such as a name, email address, phone number or account ID.

**Data license**: A contract giving a buyer the right to use a copy of data for agreed purposes, such as AI training, while the owner keeps the records. Most business data deals are licenses rather than outright sales.

**Exclusive license**: A license under which the owner agrees not to license the same data to anyone else, usually for a higher price. A non-exclusive license allows other licenses.

**Provenance**: The documented history of a dataset: who owned it, how it was collected and exported, what was excluded, and who had authority to license it.

**Provenance pack**: The documents that travel with a data lot: authorization, source systems and date ranges, inclusions and exclusions, applicable privacy notices, de-identification method and use restrictions.

**Training data**: Text, code, audio, video or other records used to train or fine-tune an AI model.

**Workflow traces**: Recordings or logs of multi-step tasks as people actually performed them, used to train computer-use agents.

**RL environment**: A simulated task setting, often built from real workflows, where an AI agent learns by trial and feedback (reinforcement learning).

**Data lot**: A defined, scoped set of records from one company offered for license, with its own provenance pack.

**Indicative estimate**: A rough range from public data points and a few answers. Not an offer, appraisal or valuation.

**Keep reading**
- [All guides](https://filefunding.com/learn)
- [For trustees and assignees](https://filefunding.com/sell/trustees)
- [Provenance and consent](https://filefunding.com/labs/provenance)