Escrow Service

Boost your sales to large organizations.

Why will a Source Code Escrow Service help boost my sales?

Some large organizations have a policy that states that they can only use third party software products and components if they have access to the source code of that product or component. This is mainly to ensure that they can maintain an existing application that has been deployed within their organization. In some cases publishers offer to license their source code to their customers to solve this problem. However, if you do not wish to offer a source code license to your customers, you can still meet the needs of the customer by offering them a Source Code Escrow License. This means that the customer will still be able to use, buy and license your product, as it will then meet and adhere to their third party software usage policy.

What is a Source Code Escrow Service?

A Source Code Escrow Service allows you to lodge your software product source code safely with a third party escrow agent - without having to disclose it to your customers. Your customers can then subscribe to the Source Code Escrow Service for an annual fee. This Source Code Escrow Service entitles the customer to gain access to your software product source code in the following circumstances:

• If your company goes out of business and the customer is therefore unable to maintain their application software
• If your company officially stops supporting the software product and the customer is therefore unable to maintain their application software
• If you sell your product to another software publishing company and they fail to offer an equivalent source code escrow service to the existing Source Code Escrow Service customers

How does the Source Code Escrow Service work?

ComponentSource offers to act as your Escrow Agent. You sign an Escrow Agreement with us and send us the source code for the products concerned. We encrypt this source code and store it in two separate secure facilities - one located in the United States and the other located in Europe. We then delete the source code from our systems here and either destroy or return the media it was supplied on to you. We agree an annual Source Code Escrow Fee with you and publish this escrow license price on the product page of our Web Site. When a customer buys the Source Code Escrow License from us we send them a paper agreement to sign. When we receive this signed agreement back from the customer - we advise you that there is now a subscriber for the product. You will then need to lodge the product source code with us again and refresh this source code with a new submission every quarter for as long as there is a paying customer subscribing to the escrow service.

How does the customer get access to my Source Code?

If one of the three events described above occurs - the customer will engage a legal counsel and provide us with a legally sworn statement giving us the reasons and the supporting evidence why they believe the product source code should be released to them. We then check and validate that what they have said is true and that they are a current subscriber to the relevant escrow service. If we agree that the product source code should be released to them - we will do so.

What usage restrictions are on the Source Code once it is released to the customer?

There are severe restrictions on the usage of the source code once released to the customer. The customer gets no title or rights of ownership to the source code. They can only use the source code to maintain their software application. They may not copy it, remove copyright notices, they may not sub-license it to other people, they may not use it to create a product or offer a service to another company etc. The customer can only give access to the source code to employees or contractors on a 'need to know' basis and they also agree to indemnify you and your successors against any loss.

What does the Source Code Escrow Service cost?

ComponentSource provide this service to all our publishers free of charge - as we believe it is a good service to offer to our customers. So there are no initial set-up fees, recurring monthly or annual fees and there are no product submission fees. We share the annual Source Code Escrow License fees with you 50/50 - so if the annual fee received from a customer is $2,500 - we will pay you $1,250 and keep the other $1,250 to help pay for our costs in running the Source Code Escrow Service.

Important - Please note: Our Escrow Service is only available for products that we distribute and resell worldwide - so it is only available to our partners where we have a signed Worldwide Value Added Reseller Agreement. We do not offer our Escrow Service as a standalone service for anyone to use, you have to be a partner first. Sorry - but thank you for your interest.

What should I do next?

If you are interested in finding out more about our Escrow Service - please email: publishers@componentsource.com. You may also like to download and read our Publisher Source Code Escrow Agreement and also read the Customer Source Code Escrow Agreement (Note: You will have to scroll down and read from paragraph 13 onwards).