I live in Gainesville, FL, and I'm putting together a simple
searchable database of prices from local stores, focusing initially on
prices and availability of different brands of beer.  How legal is it
to collect this data (with or without stores' consent) and publish it
online?  What steps should I take to avoid encountering legal
problems?  I don't plan to charge anyone
for access to the prices or charge stores for being listed (except
"specials" or ads).  Links pertaining to laws (local, state, federal)
would be appreciated.

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Clarification of Question by untree-ga on 03 Feb 2005 10:49 PST

Feel free to ignore the "What steps should I take" part if you feel
it's asking too much for the price, though I would definitely
appreciate it.

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Clarification of Question by untree-ga on 03 Feb 2005 12:09 PST

Prices are obtained by walking into stores and looking at retail tags.

How are you getting the data?  Are these just retail prices that
anyone could find by going into a store and looking at a price tag? 
Or are you perhaps using bots to troll and find price data in web
sites?

If these are all publicly available prices, the stores have no
proprietary interest in that data.  But what a store might object to
is your using their name in your database without their permission,
particulary if they are cast in a less-than-favorable light.  I am not
saying that they would win such a fight since trademark law permits
fair use of another party's trademarks, but they could raise a stink
that might be expensive for you to fight.

Also, you should make sure your price data is accurate and you should
specify where and when you recorded the price data, e.g., "Budweiser,
six pack cans, $4.99, Safeway on Sixth and Main on February 3, 2005,
at 9:08 p.m."  You should probably also have a disclaimer on your site
that says, "These are posted retail prices shown as of the dates,
times and locations listed.  Actual prices may be higher or lower,
depending on special offers, coupons, availability and local
conditions."  This prevents you from making any sort of a warranty to
an end user who may rely on your price data and it turns out to be
wrong.  It also helps insulate you from claims by the stores that you
are defaming them for stating a false price.

I suppose at some point if they dislike what you are doing a store
could formally tell you that neither you nor your representatives are
any longer welcome in their stores, thus causing you to be a
trespasser if you go back into the store.  It is, after all, private
property.

These are all highly risk-averse comments.  I think the likelihood of
there being any negative ramifications along the lines I mention to be
less than five percent, but better safe than sorry.

Even if you collect the price data by physically visiting each store
(the most legitimate method I can think of), I believe you're still at
risk of being sued. Simply put, a store's prices are commercial
property that it 'creates' by taking into account factors like
costs/customers/markets/etc. When you repackage that information and
use it for commercial gain (even tangentally, as in selling ad space
next to the pricing info), you're using someone else's intellectual
property. I believe this technically falls under copyright violation.

A court case on NYSE pricing data applies to your question. My
business law textbook is in storage right now, so I can't give you the
name of the case, but here's the gist: Someone was distributing stock
price data without license from the New York Stock Exchange. The
offender was distributing the price quotes for free, but he was
deriving profit from some ancillary service associated with the free
quotes. Even though the stock price data could be obtained by walking
into the NYSE building, the court ruled that the data was the end
result of a proprietary process (making a market in stocks, gathering
everyone into one room), so the stock price data was copyrighted
material. Thus, the NYSE had full rights to restrict who used its
property. This is why Yahoo! and all the other websites all license
their stock pricing data from a data service (Reuters, Bridge), who in
turn license from the NYSE/NASD.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't take the risk. I figure sooner or
later you would offend one of the stores by showing how much it marks
up relative to the competitors, and the store would send a dozen
lawyers after you. You could probably just agree to a cease and desist
order with no monetary damages, but I wouldn't risk it.

I would agree with financeeco-ga IF it could be shown that price data
on beer in local stores in Gainesville, Florida was a sufficiently
creative endeavor such that those prices merit copyright protection. 
See CDN v. Kapes at http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/coa/newopinions.nsf/04485f8dcbd4e1ea882569520074e698/40da437c7a9860de88256e5a0071835b?OpenDocument&Highlight=2,Kapes.
 But I think it is a stretch to elevate the price on a six-pack of Bud
to the status of a creative work like the coin price guide in Kapes. 
I doubt that the manager of the Quickie Mart in Gainesville is
reviewing beer-related trade publications, doing competitive industry
price analysis, and undertaking other purely creative endeavors to
arrive at his price data.  I think it much more likely that the prices
were arrived at with virtually no creative effort or perhaps were
given to the stores by their distributors, which , under authority of
the seminal Feist case (cited in Kapes) means that they are not
protectable in copyright.

But I could be wrong.

So would you say it's probably fine for small stores, but perhaps
large liquor store chains and grocery stores might protest because
they have done consumer research to form their prices?  Thanks for all
the comments and that link.