For the owner of a firm that runs on written procedures
Can I sell my company's SOPs to AI? Ownership, buyers and what comes out
In most cases yes: procedures your own staff wrote at work belong to the company, and several AI data buyers name SOPs among what they license. What comes out first is anything a client owns and any personal data.
The answer in two lines
A UK company can usually license its SOPs, because copyright in a procedure an employee writes in the course of the job belongs to the employer unless an agreement says otherwise. UK copyright's text and data mining exception covers only research for a non-commercial purpose, so a commercial AI buyer works from a licence.
Source: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, section 11
Who owns the procedures your staff wrote?
Section 11 makes the author of a work its first owner, and where an employee makes a literary work in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to any agreement to the contrary. A procedure a contractor or consultant wrote starts with them unless their contract passed it to you.
Source: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, section 11
Can an AI company copy them without asking?
The exception for computational analysis lets a person with lawful access copy a work only for the sole purpose of research for a non-commercial purpose, and a copy made under it may not be passed on without the copyright owner's say. Training a model to sell is not that purpose.
Source: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, text and data analysis
Who buys SOPs, and what they publish on pay and size
micro1 names SOPs among the operational records it licenses and says it looks for established companies with 30+ full-time employees and substantial historical operational data; its referral page puts approved data packages at $100K-$2M+. Nyne's floor is 20+ full-time U.S. W-2 employees, and Troveo says AI labs and startups are paying six figures for company data exports. Each line is from the organisation's own page as we read it in October.
Source: SOP data buyers
What has to come out before anything is sold
A procedure written under a client's contract or confidentiality terms is that client's question before it is yours. Names of staff, customers and suppliers inside a procedure are personal data under the UK GDPR, information relating to an identified or identifiable person, so they come out or are anonymised first.
Source: UK GDPR, Article 4
Where a regulation required you to write a procedure and keep it, licensing a copy leaves that duty with you: the rules on this site's register say which procedures must be kept.
Source: Written procedure rules
Which way a sale goes
A trading company licenses its procedures and keeps using them. A company that is closing can sell them through its directors only before a liquidator or administrator is appointed or a winding-up petition is presented, and through the office-holder, or by the court's order, after that, as the SOP company page sets out. An adviser can introduce a client firm that runs on written procedures.
A note to pass on
Found this for the person who decides? "Our written procedures may be licensable to an AI data buyer. This page covers who owns them, who buys and what has to come out first. Worth a call before anything is sent?"
Ask about your own procedures
Tell us about the firm and the procedures it holds in the form on the home page, and a person will reply. Which SOP platforms let the procedures out is on the SOP software page.