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Escrow protection for developers

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Proactively address your customers’ concerns

When software and technology developers license their products, technical support and maintenance are always top of mind concerns for their customers. Most users won’t sign a license agreement without maintenance and support coverage. The risks are too high if the vendor were to go out of business or no longer provide support for other reasons.

As a technology developer, you can put your customers at ease, gain their confidence, and shorten your sales cycles by offering escrow protection upfront as a value-added service.

Our comprehensive software and technology escrow services, incorporated during license negotiations, act like a prenuptial agreement for your customers. As a trusted, neutral third party, our administers the escrowing of licensed source code and other associated materials for you and your customers. Access to the escrowed materials occurs only under specific and controlled circumstances that are mutually predetermined in advance.

Comprehensive escrow services meet your unique needs — and those of each customer

We provide flexible escrow services governed by an agreement that gives you and your customer the right level of protection in each unique situation. Our escrow services include the key features required by all parties desiring escrow protection, but at the same time are flexible enough to accommodate additional requirements for custom and/or individual needs.

When you offer your customers our escrow services, you will be adding significant value in safeguarding their investment with you, as well as earning their trust — all backed by our reputation for integrity and success in the escrow industry for over 25 years.

Save time and effort with the escrow management center

Once you’ve established an escrow account, you want to spend minimal time managing it. Escrow Management Center provides our customers with web-based access to real-time transactions with up-to-date escrow account information, allowing you to:

  • View account information across multiple accounts. Account lists, deposit data, beneficiary enrollments, work requests, contact information, etc.
  • Conduct escrow transactions. Add, edit, delete company contacts or beneficiaries, request terminations.
  • Produce reports. Account summaries, deposits, beneficiary data, work requests, contacts and accounts. You can sort, download, print, and manipulate this data.
  • View imaged documents. Agreements, enrollments, amendments, descriptions of deposits, etc.

Protection for software and technology developers

Since our dates and timestamps all materials deposited into escrow, an escrow account creates an audit trail of the development of software and technology, and provides independent validation of the ownership of the related intellectual property.

We have no vested interest in defending one party over another and, therefore, has the trust of the courts to vouch for the existence and ownership of your intellectual property.

Verification: A Fundamental Element of Software Escrow.

Although putting software in an escrow account ensures that your code will be released if and when a release condition occurs, your licensees still don’t really have the assurance that the software will be complete, usable, or even readable. Don’t overlook the importance of Escrow Verification Services to help streamline your sales cycles via an independent validation of the completeness, accuracy, and functionality of your escrow deposit, and to help assure your licensees that they’d be able to read, recreate, and maintain the software upon release.

A comprehensive service — not a complex set of prepackaged agreements

Our escrow professionals will work with you to define the right level of protection for each of your customers’ requirements.

The result of our consultative approach is the generation of an agreement that fits all parties’ needs. Your customer or technology partner may require a three-party agreement, signed by you (the escrow depositor), us, and your licensee customer (escrow beneficiary). Alternatively, it may be a two-party agreement signed by you as the technology developer and us.

Assured privacy and security

You can rest easy knowing that your data is completely protected within our secure environment for data transfer, data storage, and account management of escrow deposits. Our comprehensive security framework includes the following attributes:

  • Deposit security. Tracks chain of custody from the time of receipt to the release of the deposit. Vault administrators code and track a physical media deposit upon delivery to a vault. Electronic media deposit are encrypted and transferred to one of our vaults using secure transfer protocols.
  • Storage security. Prevents unauthorized access to physical and electronic vaults. We store all escrow media and documents in vaults at secure, offsite facilities, which include uninterruptible power supplies, non-combustible construction, gaseous fire protection, and sophisticated access control security systems.
  • Facility security. Adheres to stringent physical security practices which restrict access to the materials.
  • Deposit retrieval security. When a depositor does not meet the terms stated in their escrow deposit account agreement, a beneficiary can request a release of the deposit materials. Vault administrators do not move the materials from their storage location until they complete a comprehensive internal review and material inventory.

 

NCC Group Software Resilience has acquired Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management (IPM) business. For more information on the acquisition, please visit our dedicated information hub, or contact Iron Mountain IPM.

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