Who owns data and schema

Question

We need to keep a copy of our legacy data for reporting purposes but our previous vendor is requesting we delete all copies of the old DB. Deleting the data makes no sense, it a very real sense that data is ours, but we're not sure of 'normal' legal ownership of the schema. Does anyone have experience of a previous supplier requiring all copies of a database to be deleted? And how did you address it - flat file export? What about column names etc.

I realise you're not lawyers, but in this instance knowledge of what is normal in the real world is a useful bargaining tool.

Answer 1

Never sign an agreement that would allow a vendor to take away your data from you when you terminate the agreement. If you signed such an agreement, ouch. I work at a SaaS business, but we do allow clients to take their data if need be. They of course don't get the database backups, which have multiple client's data, but they can have dumps of their own in a CSV or similar format.

Please clarify the question with some background about what it is that you (your company) signed. Assuming that's not a kill-after-sharing secret as well :-)

Answer 2

The way I see it a DB schema is IP, I guess the answer depends what kind of vendor we are talking about and if you did or did not signed any specific agreement.

The data generated by you, IMO is totally yours.

If the data is generated by your users, they might have the right to ask you for a dump and even delete it from the DB, but that normally depends on specific country and business laws.