API & Platform Agreements
GlobalB Law drafts and negotiates API and platform agreements that define access rights, usage boundaries, data ownership, and liability in the ecosystem relationships that digital businesses depend on.
APIs are the commercial and legal connective tissue of the modern digital economy. Whether you are a platform exposing your API to third-party developers, a business integrating a mission-critical external API, or an aggregator sitting between multiple data sources and end users, the agreement governing that integration determines who owns the resulting data, who bears liability when things fail, and whether your business model survives a platform's unilateral decision to change its terms.
GlobalB Law has experience on both sides of these relationships. For API providers, we draft developer terms, acceptable-use policies, rate-limit enforcement mechanics, and data ownership provisions that protect the platform's commercial interests while enabling a healthy developer ecosystem. For API consumers, we analyse the risk embedded in standard developer agreements, particularly around data portability, API deprecation notice periods, and indemnification obligations, and negotiate improvements where the integration is commercially significant.
Platform agreements require additional layers: marketplace rules, app-store policies, revenue-share arrangements, and the increasingly complex requirements imposed by the EU's Digital Markets Act on gatekeeper platforms. We advise both platforms subject to DMA obligations and businesses seeking to enforce their rights against dominant platforms.
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Who owns the data generated through API integrations?
Data ownership in an API context depends entirely on the contractual terms. Absent a clear clause, the platform typically asserts broad rights over data passing through its infrastructure. We draft explicit data-ownership provisions that distinguish between input data (owned by the API consumer), output data (often a negotiated split), and derived or aggregated data that the platform may legitimately analyse for service-improvement purposes.
Our business is critically dependent on a third-party API. What happens if the API is discontinued?
API deprecation is a genuine business risk, especially for startups building on consumer-platform APIs. We negotiate minimum notice periods, SLA commitments during wind-down, data-export obligations, and where possible, source-code or service escrow arrangements. We also advise on contractual structures that reduce single-point-of-failure dependency.
Does the EU Digital Markets Act affect how we design our platform agreements?
If your platform meets the DMA's gatekeeper thresholds, yes, significantly. The DMA imposes mandatory interoperability obligations, data-portability requirements, and restrictions on self-preferencing that must be reflected in your terms. Even platforms below the thresholds need to monitor compliance obligations as the DMA's scope evolves. We advise on DMA obligations and, for smaller platforms, on rights against gatekeepers.
We are launching an app on a major app store. Can we negotiate the platform's standard terms?
Major app stores present largely non-negotiable standard terms for most developers. However, their terms are increasingly subject to regulatory challenge: the DMA in the EU, the App Store investigation by the Turkish Competition Authority, and antitrust litigation in the US have all produced carve-outs and modifications. We advise on how to document your rights and, where platform conduct is unlawful, how to pursue remedies.
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