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Can I place a directory that lists other companies contact details and other relavent information on my commercial website?

We are a magazine site and this would be placed for an additional resource for readers. We have no legal connection with the corporations we would be listing.

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

You have to read each company's Terms of Use, or contact each company directly. Nobody can determine the legality of republishing content based upon the information you've given.

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By contact information I mean main location, phone number and contact person or ceo. – Alice Sep 17 '12 at 13:02
It depends on the company. For example, the following quote is from the Terms of Use ( fisglobal.com/termsofuse ) of a site I work on: "The material, information, and content on this Web site are copyrighted property of FIS and may not be copied, distributed, republished, uploaded, posted, or transmitted without express written consent. Any reproduction, modification, or other use is expressly prohibited." ... If I were in your situation, I would contact each company directly to see what they're okay with. – Will Peavy Sep 17 '12 at 17:30
up vote 0 down vote

It's better to contact them and ask them first or as suggested read their terms of services. but if you can't, I recommend you to do some protections against spam crawlers or email address harvester robots and then put a disclaimer note somewhere near this listing.

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Do I need to get permission from them in writing? What I want to list is, main location, phone number and current ceo. – Alice Sep 17 '12 at 13:00
Email request is fine enough. – silvercover Sep 17 '12 at 15:41
up vote 0 down vote

As long as you display public information there is no legal concern. Any business directory out there is providing the same information and you don't have to contact or read privacy notices - again as long as you don't display sensitive information.

You can even publish financial records of the companies if you have access to them as again, this is also public information.

Since you said it's good for your users I would sugest setting all the new pages on no index , do follow so Google won't index this duplicate contant so you can run into Google related issues. ( at the end of the day is the exact same content that is probably available on several other business directories).

Hope it helps.

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