No it’s not. You can’t copyright a fact, only its presentation. There might be some laws that they could legitimately use to stop you doing this, but it wouldn’t be copyright.
But, that’s exactly what they’ve got. Presentation of prices. If you take it from their presentation, I can see their issue. If you send people into stores to gather those facts for yourself, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
What I don’t really understand is why they take issue in the first place. You’re effectively advertising for them on your site.
No, the price is a fact. If the price were included in a paragraph of prose, that prose could be copyrighted. The whole design and layout of their site could maybe be considered creative enough to be copyrighted. But the raw numbers cannot.
I’m not at all versed in the legalese, perhaps I’m using the wrong term (IP). We are in agreement that they can’t do anything about your site having their prices listed.
What they probably can do something about is you taking that data from their API or website without authorisation. If it isn’t called Intellectual Property, then let’s call it “Woolies doesn’t like that” law.
There might be something they can do with respect to “unauthorised computer access” laws. I don’t really know much about our laws in that area. But failing that, I can’t imagine there’s anything they can do to get them in legal trouble.
They could absolutely revoke API keys, though that would not prevent a blunter web scraping tactic.
No it’s not. You can’t copyright a fact, only its presentation. There might be some laws that they could legitimately use to stop you doing this, but it wouldn’t be copyright.
But, that’s exactly what they’ve got. Presentation of prices. If you take it from their presentation, I can see their issue. If you send people into stores to gather those facts for yourself, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
What I don’t really understand is why they take issue in the first place. You’re effectively advertising for them on your site.
No, the price is a fact. If the price were included in a paragraph of prose, that prose could be copyrighted. The whole design and layout of their site could maybe be considered creative enough to be copyrighted. But the raw numbers cannot.
I’m not at all versed in the legalese, perhaps I’m using the wrong term (IP). We are in agreement that they can’t do anything about your site having their prices listed.
What they probably can do something about is you taking that data from their API or website without authorisation. If it isn’t called Intellectual Property, then let’s call it “Woolies doesn’t like that” law.
There might be something they can do with respect to “unauthorised computer access” laws. I don’t really know much about our laws in that area. But failing that, I can’t imagine there’s anything they can do to get them in legal trouble.
They could absolutely revoke API keys, though that would not prevent a blunter web scraping tactic.