| IT |
A legal arrangement whereby an asset often money, but sometimes other property such as art, a deed of title, web site, software source code or a cryptographic key is delivered to a third party called an escrow agent to be held in trust or otherwise pending a contingency or the fulfillment of a condition or conditions in a contract (Upon the occurrence of the escrow agreement, the escrow agent will deliver the asset to the proper recipient; otherwise the escrow agent is bound by his/her fiduciary duty to maintain the escrow account. Source code escrow means deposit of the source code for the software into an account held by an escrow agent. Escrow is typically requested by a party licensing software (e.g., licensee or buyer), to ensure maintenance of the software. The software source code is released by the escrow agent to the licensee if the licensor (e.g., seller or contractor) files for bankruptcy or otherwise fails to maintain and update the software as promised in the software license agreement) |
