What is “licensing”?
Licensing is a commercial arrangement in which one party (the licensor) grants another party (the licensee) the right to use, produce, distribute or sublicense intellectual property, technology, brand or content — in exchange for a fee, royalty or other consideration. Licensing is a core business model in software (SaaS, on-prem), media (music, film, publishing), pharmaceuticals (drug compounds), and consumer brands (toys, apparel).
Common licensing structures
- Exclusive vs. non-exclusive: exclusive licensee is the only one who can use the IP in the defined scope; non-exclusive allows multiple licensees.
- Field of use: license scope limited to a specific industry, geography or application.
- Term: fixed-term, perpetual, or renewable annually.
- Royalty: percentage of revenue or fixed per-unit fee; sometimes lump-sum.
- Sublicense rights: whether the licensee can further license to third parties.
Licensing in startup context
- Inbound licensing: licensing from universities, research labs, or other companies — common in deep-tech.
- Outbound licensing: revenue model for IP-rich businesses (research labs, pharma, content libraries).
- White-label / OEM: a specific form of licensing where the licensee rebrands the product.
- Open source licensing: non-commercial release with copyleft (GPL), permissive (MIT, Apache) or other terms.
Türkiye’de licensing
Türkiye’de licensing FSEK (Fikir ve Sanat Eserleri Kanunu), 6769 sayılı Sınai Mülkiyet Kanunu ve TBK kapsamında düzenlenir. Yazılım lisanslama vergisel açıdan dikkat gerektirir — yurtdışı kuruluşa ödenen lisans bedeli stopaja tabi olabilir (KVK Madde 30). Açık kaynak lisansları (özellikle GPL gibi copyleft lisanslar) Türk ticari yazılımlarında uyum dikkati gerektirir.
Do: document licensing scope, exclusivity, royalty, and term in writing; negotiate sublicense rights carefully.
Don’t: assume open-source code is “free to use” — copyleft and attribution obligations apply and breach can be expensive.
Licensing: scope is everything
A licence grants someone the right to use intellectual property without transferring ownership — the difference from an assignment, which hands the asset over entirely. Because the licensor keeps the underlying right, the value and the risk live in the scope. The critical dimensions are exclusivity (exclusive, sole or non-exclusive), the field of use, the territory, the term, and whether the licensee can sublicense. Commercial terms then sit on top: royalties or a flat fee, minimum commitments, audit rights, and what happens to the licence on insolvency or change of control. In software, additional layers — open-source obligations, source-code escrow, support and update rights — often matter as much as the grant itself. A poorly scoped licence either gives away too much or fails to deliver what the licensee actually needed.