They (The work Number/Equifax) don't license it at all. Company's pay for the privilege in fact. It's sold as outsourcing the "costly" HR task of providing salary data themselves. Other companys or individuals then pay Equifax $35 to make a single enquiry or subscribe at a monthly rate.

Users include 82% of all F500 companies and they have 225 employment records.

My company uses it :(

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/30/16762661-exclusi...

This is a pretty shocking news article regarding the last time Eqifax was in the news about this a few years ago. At that time (like now) they were selling the data to all kinds of companies.