Legal Question in Business Law in Virginia

Re: Rental Listings

First, I am assuming that you have access to this

information in an unrestricted form. Obviously,

if you have a contract under which you have

access to this information, then you are bound

by the terms of that contract.

However, I am assuming that this information is

published publicly and is available to anyone

who wants to have it, without restriction, such

as in the newspaper or in a monthly magazine

of real estate listings, or the like.

Second, the question of intellectual property

in a "directory" -- which is essentially what

you are talking about -- is problematic. For

example, is the telephone book protected by

copyright? Copyright laws protect "literary

works" and a telephone directory is clearly not

a literary work. However, the law says that a

directory like the telephone directory cannot

be copied verbatim, and has some limited

copyright protection.

Clearly, if Long & Foster publishes a monthly

magazine, you could NOT photocopy it exactly

and sell exact copies of their magazine.

The question is: Can you write your OWN

content, using your own editorial input and

original approach to presenting the information,

drawing upon the information published by others?

I look at this as follows: Could you write a

book on a topic such as dinosaurs in which you

summarized, reviewed, and analyzed all the other

books out there on dinosaurs? Of course. As long

as you are writing your own book, with your own

editorial content, you could clearly make

mention of what other scholars have said over the

years on the subject.

So, can you create your own website, presumably

with your own design, format, structure,

approach, etc., which draws upon the publicly-

available information of others that has been

published without contractual restriction?

I believe you can. I believe it would be very

important to show that you are adding your own

approach and putting the information in your own

format and into your own system.

I think you should NOT copy the other companies'

text and data verbatim, but should reorganize

it into your own approach.

Bear in mind that photographs may be copyrighted

separately and you might not be free to copy

their photographs. Obviously don't copy

trademarked symbols or the like.

Now, this especially is a situation in which

being right (as I see it) will not make you

immune from being sued. People can try to sue

you even if they are wrong. And I think that

there are both judges and lawyers who might have

fuzzy thinking about your project and may take it

the wrong way. Even though you are proposing to

give those companies free advertising, the

ability of people to be stupid is endless.