Third party

Third party is often used in the English language to refer to a person or group that has some connection to a relationship between two parties. Here, a "party" is a person or group of people who act together. If two parties share a close relationship, a third party is farther away or more different from them. It could more directly mean:

• Third party (politics), in any two-party system of politics, a third party is a party other than the two dominant ones
• Third-party developer, a hardware or software developer not directly tied to the primary product that a consumer is using
• Third party (civil litigation), a party brought into a civil legal proceeding by a defendant or by another third party
  • Third party beneficiary, a person who may have the right to sue on a contract, despite not having originally been a party to the contract; see also, Privity of contract
  • Third party insurance