What does a field of use limit?
A field of use limits what the buyer may do with your data, separately from how long it may do so (the term) and whether others can license it too (exclusivity). A field can be a purpose, such as training, fine-tuning or evaluation, or a product, an industry or a set of named partners. The US antitrust agencies' licensing guidelines describe a copyrighted software program licensed for use only in hospitals under some licenses and only in group medical practices under others, at different royalties, and note that field-of-use limitations "may serve procompetitive ends by allowing the licensor to exploit its property as efficiently and effectively as possible" (DOJ and FTC, Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property, 2017).
Why does a field of use matter for SOPs, documents and code?
It matters because the same material can serve a buyer's model or a buyer's competing product, and you can allow one without the other. micro1's master terms bar the buyer from using licensed data to build a product "directly competing with Licensor's business" or to reverse-engineer "business processes, pricing methodologies, customer relationships, or proprietary workflows" (micro1, s. 1.4). Negotiated grants can be narrower still: Tempus lets Pathos use licensed records "for its internal purposes" and to assist one named partner (Tempus 8-K, Oct 23 2026).
How does a field of use affect what you are paid?
Every field you do not grant is one you can still license, so a narrow field can sit alongside other licenses of the same data, and an exclusive license limited to one field leaves the rest open. Your company can be paid more than once, through renewals and repeat licences.
General information, not legal advice.