Legal Question in Technology Law in Nebraska

Re: Redistribution of stock quotes

Stock prices are in the public domain, but an organization's method of presenting them to the public is copyrightable, and I would assume that Yahoo! has a copyright on all of its material. You will thus need Yahoo!'s consent before you can use them as your data source.

(If this distinction is hard to see, consider a public event like the Macy's Thanksgiving parade in New York. Anyone can go see the parade and record it with their own video equipment, but the TV network that carries the parade has a copyright in its broadcast. Anyone who tries to make use of the network's coverage for their own financial gain would be subject to a suit by the network, even though the parade itself is not copyrighted. Your plan seems to have the same problem.)

I think you will need to talk to Yahoo! about your plan and seek their permission. You should also consider what your system will do when Yahoo! is down or inacessible, or when the folks at Yahoo! decide to reformat their web pages or change the addresses. If you negotiate with them, they might agree to let you have advance notice of these changes so that you won't suddenly find your service crippled. They will probably want you to pay, but they might be willing to do this on a per-hit basis so that your charges will be tied to the amount of business you are doing.

Then again, they might refuse to cooperate with you for a variety of reasons. For example, they might be concerned about being named as a co-defendant if your service is sued. They might also want a lot of your proprietery information in order to decide whether to cooperate (If so, get a non-disclosure agreement!).

That was a longer answer than I had anticipated. The short answer is: Yahoo!'s presentation isn't public domain, You need to work out a deal with them, and they might not be willing to go along.