Re: Data ... who is the owner?

[Bob Fulks <bfulks@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You could be right. I can see both sides of the argument.

I would think that the original data is the property of the exchange that 
produces it. If you own something, you can decide to sell copies of it and 
license copies of it. The owner of the data can choose the terms under which 
customers can get the data. If the customers do not like the terms, they can 
simply not spend the money.

A data provider that simply distributes the data would be like a book store 
that simply distributes books or the cable company that simply distributes a 
TV program. The book store owns the book but not the information in it. 
They cannot reprint it and sell copies. If the book contains market data, 
it would seem to be subject to copyright protection like any book. Certainly, electronic (PDF) books are protected the same way.

But if the data producer combines the data from several exchanges to produce 
more complete data, they could say they are adding value so could own the 
added value.

In any case, if you agree to the terms and conditions of the supplier and 
those say you are licensing the data that they own, then I think you have a 
contractual agreement that supercedes the Uniform Commercial Code 
(See:  <

http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/ucc.table.html> )

And if you want to redistribute the data, you probably will be in breach of 
contract and, as you say, end up in court.

Complicated subject. It would be interesting to read the court decision.

Bob Fulks



At 09:44 AM 5/14/2005, Mark Brown wrote:

>Hello Bob,
>
>i belive that you do own your data - the supreme court made a ruling
>of such in favor of smith barney.  i was working for sb at the time
>and the article appeared in either s&c or futures magazine. i have the
>issue around here somewhere.
>
>latter fyi dbc - esignal sued myself and some others and the judge
>dismissed the case. it cost me allot of money to defend myself and my
>company against dbc and a year or two of grief.
>
>the court logic was that to own something and claim rights to it you
>must change the information. you can not change the information of the
>markets "the data" therefore data once published can not be claimed as
>a particular companies product. it is not a product. it is no more
>than common text.
>
>Saturday, May 14, 2005, 7:39:53 AM, you wrote:
>
>> Read the license agreement at the data source.
>
>> Generally, you do not own it.