Article

Do you keep ownership of your records?

Last updated October 18, 2026

An owner hears that a buyer pays for company records and pictures a truck backing up to the server room. Fifteen years of estimates, job files and change orders, gone for a cheque. That is not how micro1 describes it. micro1 says companies keep ownership. It talks about licensing, with data kept for agreed periods and deleted on request or at the end. This page settles what micro1 publishes about ownership, how long it keeps the data, who can see it, what you still control, and what to check in the agreement before anyone signs.

The short answer

You keep the records. micro1’s answer to “who owns the data?” is one sentence on its data partnerships page: “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.”

What micro1 offers is a licence. Its page says it “helps companies monetize those assets through data licensing opportunities.” Its October announcement describes a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months “acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data.” The announcement uses both words, acquiring and licensing. micro1 does not publish what each word covers in a given deal. On ownership, the one line it publishes is the one above.

Three more points sit next to ownership. Data is kept only for agreed periods. It is deleted on request or at the end of the engagement. And access is restricted to a limited number of authorised team members. Each of those is quoted, in micro1’s words, further down.

See if your company qualifies at micro1

Licence or sale: the difference in plain words

This part is our own explanation, not micro1’s, and it is not legal advice.

A sale moves ownership. After a sale, the thing belongs to someone else. You can’t use it, change it or sell it again. If you sold your estimating files, the files would no longer be yours.

A licence lends permission. The owner lets someone use a thing, for a purpose, for a time, on terms. The owner keeps it the whole way through. When the licence ends, the permission ends.

Think of the difference between renting out the scissor lift and selling it. Rent it out, and it comes back on Friday. Sell it, and you are shopping for a scissor lift on Monday. Most owners have done both, and nobody confuses the two once the paperwork is in front of them.

micro1’s published words point the same way as the rented lift. Companies retain ownership of their underlying data. The data is processed for the agreed use case, kept for agreed periods and then deleted.

What micro1 is licensing: how the work was done

The next question is what, exactly, micro1 is given permission to use. The answer is not the customer list.

micro1 says, in its October announcement, that it “uses de-identified company data.” De-identified comes first. On its data partnerships page it says “personally identifiable information (PII) is removed when relevant.” It also says that “certain datasets may undergo synthetic rewrites that preserve workflow structure.”

In plain words: the people come out, the steps of the work stay. micro1 says it is looking for “data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” A card number teaches nothing about that. How the work was done does. How an estimate became a job. How a change order was settled. How a repair was diagnosed.

Say a commercial HVAC contractor with 45 staff, as a hypothetical. The licence isn’t for the names of the building managers it serves. It is for the pattern in the job files. The call came in, the technician checked the obvious, found it wasn’t the obvious, and wrote down what it was. Multiply that by ten years of tickets. That is the kind of record a buyer uses to train AI models on real work. What the licence covers is set in the agreed scope.

Our cornerstone page on what data buyers want from a trade business goes through this split file by file, for four trades.

How long micro1 keeps the data

micro1 publishes a short answer: “Data is retained only for a limited period based on agreed retention policies.” In its answer on how company data is protected, it says it again: data is retained only for agreed periods.

Two words do the work there: limited and agreed. micro1 does not publish one retention period for every company. The period is set in the agreement with each company. That makes it something to read, not something to assume.

As our own advice, ask for the retention period in plain terms. A number of months or years, written down. Then ask when the clock starts. From delivery of the data, from the start of the engagement, or from something else. A retention period you can’t date isn’t much of a limit.

Deletion: on request or at the end

micro1 publishes two lines on deletion. On how data is protected: “deletion requests are honored according to the terms of the engagement.” On what happens to datasets after they are shared: “Upon request or at the end of an engagement, data is deleted according to the agreed retention and deletion terms.”

So there are two triggers. You can ask. Or the engagement ends. Either way, the deletion follows the agreed terms.

That second half is the part to read closely. “According to the agreed retention and deletion terms” means the agreement decides the details. As our own advice, look for answers to four questions in the contract. How do you make a deletion request, and to whom? How long does deletion take once asked? Does it cover every copy, including the prepared and rewritten versions? And will you get written confirmation that it was done?

None of those questions is hostile. They are the same questions you would ask a document-storage vendor before handing over the filing cabinets.

Who at micro1 can see the records

Ownership is one question. Who handles the records while the licence runs is another. micro1 publishes several lines on this.

Access “is restricted to a limited number of authorized team members.” Staff with access to data systems “use company-managed devices” and “follow established security controls and training requirements.” Each company’s data is “processed through isolated pipelines that prevent it from being commingled with other engagements.”

In plain words: a limited number of authorised people, on company-managed machines, under set rules, with your records kept apart from everyone else’s. Your job files don’t end up in one pile with another company’s.

micro1 also says that “companies are given the opportunity to review representative samples before prepared data is used.” You see examples of what the de-identified records look like before they are used. If a sample shows something that should have been taken out, that is the moment to say so. Our safety page covers these protections in plain words.

What you agree before anything is shared

micro1 is clear that the rules come first and the data comes second. Its pages say every partnership is designed around the organisation’s requirements, “with clear controls over what is shared, how it is handled, and what is never included.”

Then the list. “Before any participation, together we define”:

“Approved data scope and clear boundaries”
“Security and confidentiality standards”
“Anonymization and redaction requirements”
“Internal approval processes and permissions”

Read that list as an owner. Scope is which systems and which years are in. Boundaries are what stays out. The redaction requirements are the rules for taking names out, defined before anything moves. And internal approval processes and permissions are on the list too. All four are defined together, before any participation.

Say a general contractor of 60, as a hypothetical. It might license ten years of estimates and job files, and keep the HR folder and the bank exports out entirely. That is a scope decision, made before a single file moves.

What the company still controls

Put the published terms together and the list of what stays with the company is longer than most owners expect. This summary is our own reading of micro1’s published words.

The records themselves. “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.”
The business. You keep running the company. The estimating software is still your estimating software. You keep quoting from the old jobs.
The scope. Which records are in, and which are out, is defined together before any participation.
The redaction rules. The anonymisation and redaction requirements are agreed up front.
The approvals. Your internal approval processes and permissions are part of what is defined.
The samples. You get the opportunity to review representative samples before prepared data is used.
The end date. Retention is for agreed periods, and deletion follows on request or at the end.

What you give is permission to use a prepared copy, for a purpose, for a time. What you get is paid for that permission.

Does the licence affect the price?

micro1 publishes the factors behind the number. On its data partnerships page, compensation follows dataset size and volume, workflow complexity, data quality, domain expertise represented and the uniqueness of the operational knowledge. Its tiers run from $100k+ for qualified Enterprise Data Partnerships, through $500k+, to $1M+ for “highly unique, proprietary operational data.” Its refer-a-company page lists company compensation of “$100K-$2M+ for approved data packages.”

One factor on micro1’s payout page is worth noticing on a page about ownership. “Final payout is determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.” Access terms are on the list. So the access terms are one of the things the final payout is based on.

We can’t tell you how micro1 weighs access terms against the rest, because micro1 doesn’t publish that. Our estimate gives a range inside micro1’s published band from your years of records, your systems and your headcount. It is a range, not an offer. micro1 prices each company itself.

What to check in the agreement

This section is TrustPast’s own practical advice. It is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers. The agreement is a contract. Have your own counsel read it before you sign.

With that said, here is what we would want to see in writing, in plain terms:

Ownership. A clause that says the company keeps ownership of its records. micro1 publishes that companies retain ownership of their underlying data; the contract should say the same.
What is licensed. The systems, the years and the record types, named. “Estimates and job files from 2014 to 2024” is a scope. “Operational data” is not.
What the licence is for. The purpose, in a sentence you can repeat to your business partner.
The retention period. A length of time and the date it starts.
Deletion. How to ask, how long it takes, which copies it covers and how you will know it is done.
Access. Who can see the records, in line with micro1’s published limits on authorised team members.
De-identification and redaction. The rules agreed up front, and the step where you review representative samples.
Payment. The amount, when it is paid and what it depends on.
What is excluded. The categories that are out, listed, so nobody has to remember a phone call.

Bring this list to the discovery call. If an answer is vague, ask for it in writing. If it is still vague, that is a conversation for your counsel.

What this means for a company of 30 or more

A company of 30 or more keeps records in more places than its owner tends to count. This description is ours, not a list from micro1. For each record below, ownership stays with you and the licence covers a prepared copy.

Estimates and quotes. Every version of every bid, won and lost. The first number, the revised number, the note on why it moved. A contractor of 40 might hold twelve years of these in its estimating software and a shared drive. That is the record of an estimate becoming a job. You keep quoting from it the whole time.

Job files and work orders. The job folder from start to close-out. Site photos, the scope, the daily log, the punch list. For a service company of 50, it is the ticket history: what the customer reported, what the technician found, what it turned out to be. That is a repair being diagnosed, written down.

Change orders. The request, the price, the approval, and the reason the job changed. That is a change order being settled, written down step by step.

The CRM and the email. The leads, the call notes, the proposals and the threads that moved a scope. These sit behind the estimates and explain them.

The question for each one is the same. How many years, and how completely, was the work written down? Worth two minutes to see your range? The page for companies with 30 or more staff goes through these records in more detail, and the estimate asks five questions.

What is never included

micro1’s own words on this are short. Every partnership is designed with “clear controls over what is shared, how it is handled, and what is never included.” Before any participation, the approved data scope and clear boundaries are defined together, along with the anonymisation and redaction requirements. micro1 settles what is excluded with each company, before anything is shared.

As our own advice, keep these out unless micro1 agrees otherwise in writing: attorney-client privileged records, health information, payment-card and financial-account details, Social Security numbers, minors’ data, biometric data, and classified or export-controlled material. That list is our advice, not micro1’s. Ask micro1 before you apply if any of your records sit near those lines.

Two more points, also our own advice. Leave out anything a client owns under its contract with you. Your contracts say which is which, and your counsel can confirm it. And on names: micro1 says personally identifiable information is removed when relevant, under redaction requirements defined together before participation. Ask who does the removal, and check it in the samples.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain how this works and give you a range with our estimate. The range is ours, not an offer. You apply to micro1 yourself, through the button below. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing, and we never see your files. If you want the wider picture of who is buying and why, read who buys company records, and why.

Before you apply

Four things to settle first, as our own advice:

Know what you own. List the systems and the years. Then find the client contracts, and set aside anything a client owns.
Decide the scope. Which records you are willing to license, and which stay out no matter what.
Write your questions down. Retention period, deletion, access, samples, payment. Take the list in the section above to the discovery call.
Line up counsel. Have your own lawyer read the agreement before you sign. A licence is a contract, and a short read now is cheaper than a long one later.

Then answer the five questions. If the range is worth your time, apply. The records stay yours either way.

Alex, TrustPast

Questions and answers

Who owns the records after a company licenses them to micro1?

The company. micro1’s answer to “who owns the data?” is one sentence: “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.” Its page describes the arrangement as data licensing.

How long does micro1 keep the data?

micro1 says data is retained only for a limited period based on agreed retention policies. The period is set in the agreement with each company, not published as one number.

Can we ask micro1 to delete the data?

Yes. micro1 says that upon request or at the end of an engagement, data is deleted according to the agreed retention and deletion terms, and that deletion requests are honoured according to the terms of the engagement.

Who at micro1 can see our records?

micro1 says access is restricted to a limited number of authorised team members, that staff with access use company-managed devices and follow security controls and training, and that each company’s data runs through isolated pipelines that keep it from being commingled with other engagements.

Do we get to see what is used before it is used?

micro1 says companies are given the opportunity to review representative samples before prepared data is used. The scope, the anonymisation and redaction requirements and the approvals are defined together before any participation.