Licensing Data

Licensing Data from CJKI

CJKI provides lexical data to companies, software developers, and educational organizations on a non-exclusive basis (with some exceptions). Our business model is flexible and is decided on a case-by-case basis to suit the convenience of the customer. Options include:

One-time licensing fee

With optional maintenance

Consulting

Or project basis

Stock options

Combined with licensing fee and/or royalties

Annual licensing fee

With optional maintenance

Royalties based on sales

Possibly combined with lower licensing fee

Work for hire

Customer may retain ownership rights

Our data is available in any desired format, such as either comma-delimited or tab-delimited text files, Excel, XML, HTML, etc., and in any encoding, such as UTF-8, Shift JIS, EUC, GB-2312, and Big Five.

Customization

We customize our lexical databases and fine-tune them to specific applications, rather than sell shrink-wrapped packages to end-users. To achieve this, we study our customers’ needs in-depth, help write the specifications, and after extensive consultation prepare a data package that meets the customer’s precise needs, often to the point where no further engineering is required. Not only do we customize data packages based on our existing resources, but we also build custom databases from scratch. We have extensive experience in putting together teams to compile large-scale dictionaries in a short period of time, using our sophisticated tools for automating the compilation process which can significantly reduce costs to the customer.

Licensing Fees

We are not resellers, nor are we a “data vendor” — we are a linguistic institute, and create the data ourselves based on several decades of experience and extensive know-how of CJK and Arabic lexicography. We don’t have fixed prices because, in principle, we don’t provide off-the-shelf products. The licensing fees are determined on a case-by-case basis depending on your specific needs and budget. To determine our fees, we consider such factors as the type of data required, the number of entries, the data fields, how the data will be used, and the like. Though our fees are quite reasonable, they can be significantly lowered for internal (rather than commercial) use, and be much lower if the data is to be used for research purposes. On occasion we donate data to worthy causes.

Working with CJKI

It is important to note that the benefits of working with us go well beyond cost. We are flexible in matters of format, delivery dates and business model, work hard to have an in-depth understanding of the customer’s needs, and provide excellent service that includes a reasonable amount of free technical and linguistic advice as well as free minor upgrades. Licensing data from CJKI is not merely “buying” data — it is entering into a close relationship that ensures constant advice, technical/linguistic support, and upgrades. Combined with our reasonable fees, we feel this provides great value to the customer.