I'm not sure this will answer your question but I can tell you that Hart Intercivic and the other imaging companies probably also claims ownership of the images themselves. This is one of the laws the imaging companies use to take control of the county records. The law that is applied is similar to the one that allows your family photographer to claim ownership of the negatives.

The companies do not inform the counties they are giving up control of the images at the time the contracts are written. In fact when questioned the salesmen are very uncomfortable when they have to tell the county clerks this is the case. One saleman stammered and stuttered when asked and finally came up with, "Well, you just have to trust your vendor". A salesman for another company whined, "Well, the local title companies do it." In still another case, when a county suffered a catastrophic loss they were told the county would have to buy the images back from the imaging company.

Some of these contracts even contain a clause stating the counties will not duplicate the images for sale to the public. The company owns the data, the metadata and the images.