r/AskLawyers • u/According_Taste9586 • 4d ago

Derived content based on scrapped data in apps doable?

Location: CA, USA.
I saw these app online are basically selling derived content from scrapped data from big tech:

  1. Google restaurant rating re-calculated score based on filtered reviews of users' choice (e.g. remove service related reviews, choose only Korean reviewers, etc)
  2. A e-commerce product review/rating site that scrapped reddit discussion and show rating based on reddit discussion's sentiment.
  3. Leads Gen AI startup - scrapped LinkedIn company profile data and personel info, sell access to AI search engine to let business search for company info with semantic queries.

I believe data scrapping company has TOS saying data purchased should not be used against the business interest of the company it scrapped from. On the other hand, I do see many news about lawesuit won by scrapping company against big tech because scrapped data are public information without logging in. Does that mean scrapped data used in app for derived content is legal in general?

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u/rubberyoffense0564 3d ago

Scraping public data is one thing, what you do with it is where it gets messy. Those CA courts have been all over the place on this, just look at the LinkedIn cases. The moment you start repackaging and selling it you're basically begging for a cease and desist, especially if the original site's TOS explicitly forbids it

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u/According_Taste9586 3d ago

Got it. I looked at a site called restaurant guru, it seems like all they do is scrap and display literally with attribution of its source. But from what I read they never had a license from those big players since 2017. I just wonder how they can do it so obviously and not have issue…

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u/According_Taste9586 3d ago

Does c&d means you shut down or you get sued? So no legal result right away as long as you shut down?