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Trolley.co.uk is shutting down – pricing data is apparently owned by a company

141 points by zikohh 4y ago

matt321 4y ago
can publicly available data be the property of someone?
- mtmail 4y ago
  It seems to be related to the product images, or the images were easiest to identify and fight over https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png While a product name, price could be public (a person can see it in a store), the picture is very specific and trolley didn't take the pictures.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    It seems they could also just cease use of the 'offending' informationa nd use generic imagery or descriptions instead. For bandwidth/processing reasons, I'd prefer as much text and as few graphics as possible anyway.
    - sdflhasjd 4y ago
      Unfortunately, supermarket products would be difficult to distinguish without imagery.
      - itake 4y ago
        even then, why does it cost 28k PER YEAR, for photos of product images? Can't you just spend a week in a market taking product photos yourself?
        mtmail 4y ago
        They could but at this point the (claimed) damage is already done. The price is high but I'd imagine that company guarantees high resolution professional photos of every product. Chasing the last remaining 10% products might be hard. At 160.000 products, let's say spending 1 minute per product (finding it, post production etc) at 12h/day it takes one person 9 months. Crowdsourcing the task might work.
        michaelt 4y ago
        [1] is a report of Tesco reducing the range of distinct products they stock from ~90,000 to ~63,000. Some of which will be seasonal items like easter eggs. Some others will only be available in certain stores. I suspect taking 63,000 product photos, and keeping them all matched up to the right products is probably more than a week's work. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/tesco-cuts-range-products https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/tesco-cuts-...
        deleted 4y ago
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- bpicolo 4y ago
  Depends on your country / jurisdiction
- hd4 4y ago
  Practically, no. Especially when different jurisdictions etc. become a factor.
- paxys 4y ago
  Depends. If I spend a ton of time and effort to aggregate data from public sources and license it out, my dataset can still be considered proprietary.
- 100721 4y ago
  The Google logo is publicly available on Google’s website. Does anyone own the Google logo?
mytailorisrich 4y ago
The whole thing smells fishy. While pictures would be under copyright (and it's possible copyright is with a third party specialised in this), I can't see how the price listed for a product on, say, Tesco's website and collected by yourself on Tesco's website could be subject to licensing by a third party, even considering database rights. I am also puzzled by those guys claim that they got a very "generous offer" from that company. If they are unsure a better first step would be to crowdfund legal advice. They could then crowdsource taking pictures of all the products from their users.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  Well it seems they're not scraping Tesco's website but some aggregator middleman. Like making a package tracking website using Parcels instead of FedEx, UPS, etc individually. Sure it's convenient to write code that only scrapes one website, but now that website is mad because it has a business selling that data.
- Closi 4y ago
  Unless there is a third party which is taking photos of all grocery products and then licensing that to the supermarkets, to avoid them all having to take their own photos? I used to work for one of the major supermarkets and am aware that there are providers of product images, but don't know the specifics in enough detail.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    Taking a photo only gives you copyright over that photo, it doesn’t stop other people taking a similar photo. A lot of business try and claim copyright of a subject (like a tourist attraction) and try and prevent photography of it, but that’s legal BS in any jurisdiction I’ve heard of.
    - michaelt 4y ago
      Right, but if you're making a price-comparison website with scraped data, you can't scrape the product image from a supermarket website legally. You could of course get images from some other source - but you need meticulous organisation when a single brand of tea might have 40, 80, 160, 240 and 600 bag packages.
arcza 4y ago
Seems very off and unsustainable (e.g. what happens in 2023 is unclear), along with hiding the licensor's name - that seems unreasonable. Who is the end recipient of this donation? I don't buy the story.
lapser 4y ago
As others have said, it seems fishy. They've got this data from somewhere, so why wouldn't they have looked through the license before using it? Anyway, speaking of MySupermarket, what happened to them? All I know was one day they decided to shut down, without clear reasons. Does anyone have more insight into why it happened?
- Komodai 4y ago
  They got it from web scraping, doesn't exactly have a license I guess...?
- notahacker 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm scratching my head at this. On the one hand, the UK does have some weird database trolls (a copyright troll called FootballDataCo claimed licence fees from anybody publishing football fixture lists irrespective of where they sourced the information from, and probably can do again since the EU court judgement against them presumably no longer applies) On the other hand it makes no sense to accompany a supposed order to c&d screen scraping of multiple (independently maintained) websites with thanks for their generosity and "this company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work". Either they're a valuable data provider or an licensing obstacle to using perfectly adequate screen scraping techniques, not both. Not sure why a price comparison website would screen scrape the supermarkets with APIs either...
  - jahewson 4y ago
    They're not "independently maintained" websites, they all license their data from the same 3rd party data company and re-publish it on their own websites.
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  > MySupermarket, what happened to them? iirc they were bought out by a supermarket - presumably to prevent customers from realising their prices weren't competitive
  - 4y ago
mr_gibbins 4y ago
It looks like a startup that's hit a brick wall viz a viz licensing pictures. One way of getting around this, albeit perhaps at the expense of user experience, is to insert stock photos. E.g. I imagine 'carrots' is not particularly unique. Where stock photos can't be used, i.e. it's a specialist/one-off product, perhaps the classic white-box-black-text approach? If this is a genuine site with good intentions, staffed by volunteers then it would be a shame to see it stamped down by the supermarkets.
- schappim 4y ago
  Better still use an AI to generate a stock image until one is available.
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Komodai 4y ago
Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me... Aren't there tons of companies like Trolley that scrape data, etc. without issues? Like, I assume these do: PriceSpy, PriceRunner, PrisJakt, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, etc.
- sslalready 4y ago
  A lot of E-commerce software have data feeds that are ingested by parties like pricespy. These feeds are typically either public or made available after mutual agreements. Scraping a large amount of sites for data is just too much labor in the long run.
goldcd 4y ago
I'm also slightly confused. If they were scraping the information/pictures off the supermarket sites, then I'd have expected the cease and desist to come from the supermarkets. Given that the letter came from "a company" then I presume they were taking their information from an aggregator - and seems entirely fair that you should "pay the aggregator" (as there's clearly a company out there doing something similar to what they're doing - but they were taking their data). If this company was just a data-hose, then I'd have thought you could monetize your consumer-focussed product, simply by flogging anonymized data from your users back to the supermarkets. "Customer X, dropped product Y from their weekly basket (or swapped supermarket), when you raised the price of Z (or other supermarket dropped it)"
- deleted 4y ago
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- rlpb 4y ago
  > ...then I presume they were taking their information from an aggregator - and seems entirely fair that you should "pay the aggregator" This seems to be what they are doing. From their FAQ: "Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. We appreciate that the data company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work." In the UK, the aggregator holds the IP on their aggregation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
  - caf 4y ago
    The Cease & Desist letter that Trolley received is here: https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png You can see that the aggregator has said that Trolley scraped the images and data in question from the supermarket sites. The implication seemingly being that the supermarket sites are licensing the images and prices of their own products from this third party (potentially only at a peppercorn price).
    - 4y ago
technick 4y ago
Setup a shell company in Bermuda that does the scrapping for you and then claim you buy the data from them. When they approach you just tell them you have a NDA and can't disclose the company. That'll keep them at bay for awhile... then when you're forced to disclose, they'll spend the rest of their time chasing a shell company in Bermuda. OR..... Just create a firefox extension that scrapes the pages for your users. There's many ways to keep this going while giving them the middle finger and serving your users.
- staticman2 4y ago
  If your data infringes copyright they will go after you not your fictitious shell company because it doesn't matter where you got the copyright infringing material it matters whether you illegally distributed it.
  - emilfihlman 4y ago
    No standing, others are allowed to create the same database by themselves.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Good luck with that! Rule of thumb: as a baseline, you have absolutely no rights in life... that is, no rights unless you're able to enforce them.
- baobob 4y ago
  > That'll keep them at bay for awhile This definitely would not work in the UK, and I don't know of many places it would. Asda does 22bn GBP revenue per year
- ineedasername 4y ago
  Being on the right side of the law is irrelevant if you can't afford to defend yourself in court. It's not about winning in court, it's about not having the resources to go to court & fight it to begin with.
verve_rat 4y ago
You can't copyright a list of facts. I'm confused about what they have run in to? Maybe they should take some of the money they have raised and talk to a lawyer.
- esjeon 4y ago
  You can if you curate the list. Curating requires collecting and processing information, which often can be expensive.
  - ars 4y ago
    Not in the US you can't. Even if you curate the list, a list of facts can never be copyrighted, only creative expression can be copyrighted. But other countries have different rules. See here for all the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
    - whatever1 4y ago
      So I can just buy a Bloomberg terminal, start broadcasting real time stock prices and collect a fee?
      - ars 4y ago
        Certainly, unless you sign some kind of contract with Bloomberg. (Realistically they probably make you sign.) Stock prices can not be copyrighted.
      - htrp 4y ago
        Bloomberg may not allow you to redistribute those same prices and terminate your membership. But stock prices are pretty much public knowledge (no one is coming after you for licencing for quoting a price at someone)
        tomatocracy 4y ago
hd4 4y ago
As others have pointed out, it seems sketchy as hell, the desperate last-minute plea for a considerable sum of cash, the weird reasoning about data gotten through a web scraper being somehow subject to fees, and especially in how they want to "protect" the name of the data company. Regardless, if it was legit then I'd strongly agree with the suggestion of setting up a shell company to not only avoid litigation but to set a trend in teaching these bully companies how the internet works since it seems a few still have to be taught. Anyone using a c&d against a smaller company for data that can be gotten through a web scraper really should fuck off. The UK does seem to be the place where this kind of shitty IP litigation takes place more than is typical.
wdb 4y ago
Sadly they forgot to put an easily to find email address on the page. Can't be bothered to help them out via gofundme.com
rhplus 4y ago
My guess is that they were circumventing free-tier API limits for the data-aggregation company. It’s not like this data aggregation is one big dump that they downloaded once and forgot the where it came from. Prices change daily. They’d need to be refreshing via an API (data feed) at least daily.
- matthews2 4y ago
  Trolley scraped the supermarket websites, and the supermarkets got their data (product images, nutrition info, etc.) from Brandbank (the data aggregation company).
andyish 4y ago
For the sake of 30k I wouldn't be surprised if Asda/Lidl/Tescos step in with the cash for a PR piece. Along the lines of "Being so confident they're the cheapest supermarket, we'll back a price comparison site" and helping 500,000 people to save some money.
- davidwritesbugs 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised, I'd bl**y astonished. They are as tight as a gnats arse, they screw suppliers out of pennies to improve their profits.
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    I'd be bloody surprised as well, Tesco's even charge some of their suppliers to access an online portal to upload supplier invoices! They had two portals for uploading invoices, one that was easier to use but cost, the other was a web browser interface that was clunky. I think one of them was called Marrakesh or something like that. Having been part of their new store opening team in the past and the way they undercut all other rivals in the area to get people in, which typically runs for a few weeks, depots drop everything to make sure everything is in stock at the expensive of other stores, even running dedicated lorries to the store which is costly but that came out of the Depot Transport budgets, and then Transport would argue with Warehouse if the Warehouse had failed to load cages properly because Wave1/Wave2 picks never go smoothly because goods-in is never to schedule as no one can predict holdups on the road networks, it really is a cut throat business in so many ways. I'm surprised at how many companies put up with Tesco's demands, but thats what you need to do to become a stock market leader! Likewise the public are really just price sensitive before brand loyalty. Life in the UK is very much, you get what you are given, and I've never worked for an entity that didnt have criminal elements either, which is shockingly two faced of the public, but people keep their mouth shut to keep a wage coming in and every community needs an Emmanual Goldstein figure. Massacres are a community's dirty little secret. So when is a simple reminder about general jobs losses, maybe a smattering of innuendo, not a veiled form of intimidation and harassment? Story telling can be so triggering. Even the legal system in the UK is criminal!
  - 4y ago
gatvol 4y ago
This use case seems very similar to a search index (aka google) type use case. Crawling and indexing vs scraping and storing, and then publishing in a searchable format for end users to utilise? Surely there's plenty of precedent for this?
- undecisive 4y ago
  It is, but arguably it's closer to the Google News model (in that more than just the titles are shared) which recently saw some pushback in the EU [1] In general, if the data owner says you must take it down, you rarely have a leg to stand on unless you can claim some kind of protected use (e.g. reporting or criticism) [1] https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/53690/google-news-service-infringes-on-newspaper-publishers-copyright https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/53690/google-news-service-i...
mellosouls 4y ago
IANAL but given the unreasonableness of the premise as I read it (? scraped data from public websites of multiple companies is "owned" by some mysterious third-party) this sounds more like a consequence of the UK's legal system, where minnows have to shut down when challenged by sharks, because the costs make it impossible to resist, regardless of the strength of the case. Also, its all a bit vague, especially the reason for the donations - to pay these jokers off? That just enables and encourages the bullying. They should provide more transparency as to who is claiming ownership, and what evidence is being given and legal arguments for paying.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- a2800276 4y ago
  You generally don't own the copyright to images that you scrape from the web, even public websites. A number of companies handle consumer product information internationally (such as GS1 for barcodes) and shops license product information (images, EAN Codes, nutritional information) from them, so they don't have to deal with each manufacturer individually. The manufacturers also work with these organizations. If they went into supermarkets and took pictures of all the products it would be another story, but as is, they are using pictures on the internet in a way that they aren't licensed to. This is not particular to the UK, just because some site display a picture publically does not mean you are allowed to display the same picture on your site.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    That makes more sense than simply "pricing data" which is the focus of the article.
    - a2800276 4y ago
      The cease and desist letter stated: "proprietary images and data", I doubt a commercial/sponsored database of prices exists. That would have grave anti-cartell consequences. But you're right: for most reasonable people reading the article, the _only_ relevant data on trolley.co.uk _would_ be the price information. (And I don't have any insider knowledge, I was only guessing ...)
yobbo 4y ago
The "data company" does not "own" the data. Especially not if it was collected independently by trolley.co.uk. And old case that is sometimes used to illustrate how copyright works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
- gpderetta 4y ago
  That's not really relevant for the UK, where indeed there is such a thing as database copyright.
  - yobbo 4y ago
    Only relevant if they are actually duplicating the "data company's" database; which is not what web-scraping is. For example; creating a map from air photographs is not "duplicating" another geo coded database. The geo data exists independently of any map. "Database rights" are not the same as "data rights", and if your "database" is inadvertently and routinely recreated as by product of other processes, then "database rights" can not apply. Otherwise we are in absurd world. (In this absurd world, a phone book company could charge license fees to everyone with a phone because their phone books would necessarily contain a subset of the global phone book.)
    - notahacker 4y ago
      The UK has FootballDataCo which historically "owned" the fact a football match between two clubs will be held on a particular date, irrespective of how the publisher found out that fact. So UK law has not alway been sensible about this. The EU Court of Justice threw that out, but we're not in the EU any more...
captaincaveman 4y ago
The images are obviously going to be copyrighted, I suspect the product information is also likely sourced from third party, and thus you would be infringing database rights by scraping. I find it very unlikely that the price of the products is provided by thirdparty data provider, and think the actual price is not covered by them despite them suggesting it might be.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Yes, if they scrape prices from supermarkets' websites then prices come from supermarkets, they are the ones setting those prices after all. Really, they don't need product data beyond the name. They could drop pictures and detailed data and build their own database by crowdsourcing pictures and data from their users.
- yobbo 4y ago
  > The images are obviously going to be copyrighted Copyrights are inadvertent and sometimes unintuitive. If the images are created by the product manufacturers, then they hold the copyrights. If the supermarkets edit the images, then they hold copyrights to these edits. Likewise, if trolley edits the images (undoing the supermarket edits, like cropping around some text) then trolley together with the manufacturer holds the copyright for this new image, not the supermarket. It doesn't matter where it was scraped from or who was hosting the image, just as it doesn't matter which camera was used.
jpswade 4y ago
Sounds like extortion…
abigail95 4y ago
move to a jurisdiction with more reasonable IP laws
nly 4y ago
Once these guys pay the £29K, you can be sure next year the fee will to up 5-10x
rdxm 4y ago
janmo 4y ago
The title is misleading. Never do they mention the price data. After doing some research it appears that what is really the cause for concern are the product images.
- em1sar 4y ago
  yeah it's a scam just don't donate to these people
  - janmo 4y ago
    They should ask people to take a picture of the products for them, instead of raising 30k USD/year to send the money to a fortune 500 company.
- undecisive 4y ago
  > Never do they mention the price data. After doing some research... Can you share your research? Because the cease and desist letter they link to clearly says "images and data"...
  - janmo 4y ago
    The "data" they mention are product descriptions. The issuer of the cease and desist appears to be NielsenIQ. And they don't provide price data. Their main product is to provide standardised product images with a white/transparent background, and small product descriptions. Their customers being big E-Commerce stores.
tomgp 4y ago
From their FAQ I think these are the key bits of information: >What does the data company do? >The data company digitises and maintains the product information for 98% of grocery products in the UK. They’ve generously worked with us to bring this cost as low as possible. >Why are you not giving the name of the data company? >Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. We appreciate that the data company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work. We know that providing the name of the data company could bring negative implications for them which we wouldn’t want - especially with how generous they’ve already been.
undecisive 4y ago
There's a lot in here that's infuriating. > Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. No. Whoever (as someone pointed out, probably Brandbank, they supply most of the supermarkets with data so if it isn't them, then it's likely a scam) has already received full pay for the data they've supplied - if they're charging you again for the data, that's just greed (sorry, I mean "perfectly valid capitalism") - even at 14p/entry or whatever they're charging. Some people here have mentioned that facts can't be copyrighted - it reminds me of a problem in 2011 that the people distributing timezone data to a bunch of open source projects were sued because a 3rd party software house "owned" the rights to that data[1]. I don't know where that landed (timezones still work in linux, so I think they found a workaround) but most projects like this capitulate rather than risk the cost of court. But yes, the product descriptions and images may be copyrightable - certainly, Brandbank do all their imagery in-house, and any typos in the descriptions will be owned by them, because some person being paid peanuts - likely somewhere in the Philippines - is having to sit down with a photo of the can of Campbells soup, reading and re-typing the descriptions word for word. It's just... ugh. [1] https://www.wired.com/2011/10/time-zone-data-lawsuit/ https://www.wired.com/2011/10/time-zone-data-lawsuit/
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meena123456 4y ago

141 points by zikohh 4y ago

matt321 4y ago

can publicly available data be the property of someone?

mtmail 4y ago
It seems to be related to the product images, or the images were easiest to identify and fight over https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png While a product name, price could be public (a person can see it in a store), the picture is very specific and trolley didn't take the pictures.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It seems they could also just cease use of the 'offending' informationa nd use generic imagery or descriptions instead. For bandwidth/processing reasons, I'd prefer as much text and as few graphics as possible anyway.
  - sdflhasjd 4y ago
    Unfortunately, supermarket products would be difficult to distinguish without imagery.
    - itake 4y ago
      even then, why does it cost 28k PER YEAR, for photos of product images? Can't you just spend a week in a market taking product photos yourself?
      - mtmail 4y ago
        They could but at this point the (claimed) damage is already done. The price is high but I'd imagine that company guarantees high resolution professional photos of every product. Chasing the last remaining 10% products might be hard. At 160.000 products, let's say spending 1 minute per product (finding it, post production etc) at 12h/day it takes one person 9 months. Crowdsourcing the task might work.
      - michaelt 4y ago
        [1] is a report of Tesco reducing the range of distinct products they stock from ~90,000 to ~63,000. Some of which will be seasonal items like easter eggs. Some others will only be available in certain stores. I suspect taking 63,000 product photos, and keeping them all matched up to the right products is probably more than a week's work. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/tesco-cuts-range-products https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/tesco-cuts-...
      - deleted 4y ago
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bpicolo 4y ago
Depends on your country / jurisdiction
hd4 4y ago
Practically, no. Especially when different jurisdictions etc. become a factor.
paxys 4y ago
Depends. If I spend a ton of time and effort to aggregate data from public sources and license it out, my dataset can still be considered proprietary.
100721 4y ago
The Google logo is publicly available on Google’s website. Does anyone own the Google logo?

mytailorisrich 4y ago

The whole thing smells fishy. While pictures would be under copyright (and it's possible copyright is with a third party specialised in this), I can't see how the price listed for a product on, say, Tesco's website and collected by yourself on Tesco's website could be subject to licensing by a third party, even considering database rights. I am also puzzled by those guys claim that they got a very "generous offer" from that company. If they are unsure a better first step would be to crowdfund legal advice. They could then crowdsource taking pictures of all the products from their users.

Arnavion 4y ago
Well it seems they're not scraping Tesco's website but some aggregator middleman. Like making a package tracking website using Parcels instead of FedEx, UPS, etc individually. Sure it's convenient to write code that only scrapes one website, but now that website is mad because it has a business selling that data.
Closi 4y ago
Unless there is a third party which is taking photos of all grocery products and then licensing that to the supermarkets, to avoid them all having to take their own photos? I used to work for one of the major supermarkets and am aware that there are providers of product images, but don't know the specifics in enough detail.
- mr_toad 4y ago
  Taking a photo only gives you copyright over that photo, it doesn’t stop other people taking a similar photo. A lot of business try and claim copyright of a subject (like a tourist attraction) and try and prevent photography of it, but that’s legal BS in any jurisdiction I’ve heard of.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    Right, but if you're making a price-comparison website with scraped data, you can't scrape the product image from a supermarket website legally. You could of course get images from some other source - but you need meticulous organisation when a single brand of tea might have 40, 80, 160, 240 and 600 bag packages.

arcza 4y ago

Seems very off and unsustainable (e.g. what happens in 2023 is unclear), along with hiding the licensor's name - that seems unreasonable. Who is the end recipient of this donation? I don't buy the story.

lapser 4y ago

As others have said, it seems fishy. They've got this data from somewhere, so why wouldn't they have looked through the license before using it? Anyway, speaking of MySupermarket, what happened to them? All I know was one day they decided to shut down, without clear reasons. Does anyone have more insight into why it happened?

Komodai 4y ago
They got it from web scraping, doesn't exactly have a license I guess...?
notahacker 4y ago
Yeah, I'm scratching my head at this. On the one hand, the UK does have some weird database trolls (a copyright troll called FootballDataCo claimed licence fees from anybody publishing football fixture lists irrespective of where they sourced the information from, and probably can do again since the EU court judgement against them presumably no longer applies) On the other hand it makes no sense to accompany a supposed order to c&d screen scraping of multiple (independently maintained) websites with thanks for their generosity and "this company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work". Either they're a valuable data provider or an licensing obstacle to using perfectly adequate screen scraping techniques, not both. Not sure why a price comparison website would screen scrape the supermarkets with APIs either...
- jahewson 4y ago
  They're not "independently maintained" websites, they all license their data from the same 3rd party data company and re-publish it on their own websites.
was_a_dev 4y ago
> MySupermarket, what happened to them? iirc they were bought out by a supermarket - presumably to prevent customers from realising their prices weren't competitive
- 4y ago

mr_gibbins 4y ago

It looks like a startup that's hit a brick wall viz a viz licensing pictures. One way of getting around this, albeit perhaps at the expense of user experience, is to insert stock photos. E.g. I imagine 'carrots' is not particularly unique. Where stock photos can't be used, i.e. it's a specialist/one-off product, perhaps the classic white-box-black-text approach? If this is a genuine site with good intentions, staffed by volunteers then it would be a shame to see it stamped down by the supermarkets.

schappim 4y ago
Better still use an AI to generate a stock image until one is available.

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Komodai 4y ago

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me... Aren't there tons of companies like Trolley that scrape data, etc. without issues? Like, I assume these do: PriceSpy, PriceRunner, PrisJakt, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, etc.

sslalready 4y ago
A lot of E-commerce software have data feeds that are ingested by parties like pricespy. These feeds are typically either public or made available after mutual agreements. Scraping a large amount of sites for data is just too much labor in the long run.

goldcd 4y ago

I'm also slightly confused. If they were scraping the information/pictures off the supermarket sites, then I'd have expected the cease and desist to come from the supermarkets. Given that the letter came from "a company" then I presume they were taking their information from an aggregator - and seems entirely fair that you should "pay the aggregator" (as there's clearly a company out there doing something similar to what they're doing - but they were taking their data). If this company was just a data-hose, then I'd have thought you could monetize your consumer-focussed product, simply by flogging anonymized data from your users back to the supermarkets. "Customer X, dropped product Y from their weekly basket (or swapped supermarket), when you raised the price of Z (or other supermarket dropped it)"

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rlpb 4y ago
> ...then I presume they were taking their information from an aggregator - and seems entirely fair that you should "pay the aggregator" This seems to be what they are doing. From their FAQ: "Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. We appreciate that the data company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work." In the UK, the aggregator holds the IP on their aggregation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
- caf 4y ago
  The Cease & Desist letter that Trolley received is here: https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png You can see that the aggregator has said that Trolley scraped the images and data in question from the supermarket sites. The implication seemingly being that the supermarket sites are licensing the images and prices of their own products from this third party (potentially only at a peppercorn price).
  - 4y ago

technick 4y ago

Setup a shell company in Bermuda that does the scrapping for you and then claim you buy the data from them. When they approach you just tell them you have a NDA and can't disclose the company. That'll keep them at bay for awhile... then when you're forced to disclose, they'll spend the rest of their time chasing a shell company in Bermuda. OR..... Just create a firefox extension that scrapes the pages for your users. There's many ways to keep this going while giving them the middle finger and serving your users.

staticman2 4y ago
If your data infringes copyright they will go after you not your fictitious shell company because it doesn't matter where you got the copyright infringing material it matters whether you illegally distributed it.
- emilfihlman 4y ago
  No standing, others are allowed to create the same database by themselves.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Good luck with that! Rule of thumb: as a baseline, you have absolutely no rights in life... that is, no rights unless you're able to enforce them.
baobob 4y ago
> That'll keep them at bay for awhile This definitely would not work in the UK, and I don't know of many places it would. Asda does 22bn GBP revenue per year
ineedasername 4y ago
Being on the right side of the law is irrelevant if you can't afford to defend yourself in court. It's not about winning in court, it's about not having the resources to go to court & fight it to begin with.

verve_rat 4y ago

You can't copyright a list of facts. I'm confused about what they have run in to? Maybe they should take some of the money they have raised and talk to a lawyer.

esjeon 4y ago
You can if you curate the list. Curating requires collecting and processing information, which often can be expensive.
- ars 4y ago
  Not in the US you can't. Even if you curate the list, a list of facts can never be copyrighted, only creative expression can be copyrighted. But other countries have different rules. See here for all the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
  - whatever1 4y ago
    So I can just buy a Bloomberg terminal, start broadcasting real time stock prices and collect a fee?
    - ars 4y ago
      Certainly, unless you sign some kind of contract with Bloomberg. (Realistically they probably make you sign.) Stock prices can not be copyrighted.
    - htrp 4y ago
      Bloomberg may not allow you to redistribute those same prices and terminate your membership. But stock prices are pretty much public knowledge (no one is coming after you for licencing for quoting a price at someone)
      - tomatocracy 4y ago

hd4 4y ago

As others have pointed out, it seems sketchy as hell, the desperate last-minute plea for a considerable sum of cash, the weird reasoning about data gotten through a web scraper being somehow subject to fees, and especially in how they want to "protect" the name of the data company. Regardless, if it was legit then I'd strongly agree with the suggestion of setting up a shell company to not only avoid litigation but to set a trend in teaching these bully companies how the internet works since it seems a few still have to be taught. Anyone using a c&d against a smaller company for data that can be gotten through a web scraper really should fuck off. The UK does seem to be the place where this kind of shitty IP litigation takes place more than is typical.

wdb 4y ago

Sadly they forgot to put an easily to find email address on the page. Can't be bothered to help them out via gofundme.com

rhplus 4y ago

My guess is that they were circumventing free-tier API limits for the data-aggregation company. It’s not like this data aggregation is one big dump that they downloaded once and forgot the where it came from. Prices change daily. They’d need to be refreshing via an API (data feed) at least daily.

matthews2 4y ago
Trolley scraped the supermarket websites, and the supermarkets got their data (product images, nutrition info, etc.) from Brandbank (the data aggregation company).

andyish 4y ago

For the sake of 30k I wouldn't be surprised if Asda/Lidl/Tescos step in with the cash for a PR piece. Along the lines of "Being so confident they're the cheapest supermarket, we'll back a price comparison site" and helping 500,000 people to save some money.

davidwritesbugs 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised, I'd bl**y astonished. They are as tight as a gnats arse, they screw suppliers out of pennies to improve their profits.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  I'd be bloody surprised as well, Tesco's even charge some of their suppliers to access an online portal to upload supplier invoices! They had two portals for uploading invoices, one that was easier to use but cost, the other was a web browser interface that was clunky. I think one of them was called Marrakesh or something like that. Having been part of their new store opening team in the past and the way they undercut all other rivals in the area to get people in, which typically runs for a few weeks, depots drop everything to make sure everything is in stock at the expensive of other stores, even running dedicated lorries to the store which is costly but that came out of the Depot Transport budgets, and then Transport would argue with Warehouse if the Warehouse had failed to load cages properly because Wave1/Wave2 picks never go smoothly because goods-in is never to schedule as no one can predict holdups on the road networks, it really is a cut throat business in so many ways. I'm surprised at how many companies put up with Tesco's demands, but thats what you need to do to become a stock market leader! Likewise the public are really just price sensitive before brand loyalty. Life in the UK is very much, you get what you are given, and I've never worked for an entity that didnt have criminal elements either, which is shockingly two faced of the public, but people keep their mouth shut to keep a wage coming in and every community needs an Emmanual Goldstein figure. Massacres are a community's dirty little secret. So when is a simple reminder about general jobs losses, maybe a smattering of innuendo, not a veiled form of intimidation and harassment? Story telling can be so triggering. Even the legal system in the UK is criminal!
- 4y ago

gatvol 4y ago

This use case seems very similar to a search index (aka google) type use case. Crawling and indexing vs scraping and storing, and then publishing in a searchable format for end users to utilise? Surely there's plenty of precedent for this?

undecisive 4y ago
It is, but arguably it's closer to the Google News model (in that more than just the titles are shared) which recently saw some pushback in the EU [1] In general, if the data owner says you must take it down, you rarely have a leg to stand on unless you can claim some kind of protected use (e.g. reporting or criticism) [1] https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/53690/google-news-service-infringes-on-newspaper-publishers-copyright https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/53690/google-news-service-i...

mellosouls 4y ago

IANAL but given the unreasonableness of the premise as I read it (? scraped data from public websites of multiple companies is "owned" by some mysterious third-party) this sounds more like a consequence of the UK's legal system, where minnows have to shut down when challenged by sharks, because the costs make it impossible to resist, regardless of the strength of the case. Also, its all a bit vague, especially the reason for the donations - to pay these jokers off? That just enables and encourages the bullying. They should provide more transparency as to who is claiming ownership, and what evidence is being given and legal arguments for paying.

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a2800276 4y ago
You generally don't own the copyright to images that you scrape from the web, even public websites. A number of companies handle consumer product information internationally (such as GS1 for barcodes) and shops license product information (images, EAN Codes, nutritional information) from them, so they don't have to deal with each manufacturer individually. The manufacturers also work with these organizations. If they went into supermarkets and took pictures of all the products it would be another story, but as is, they are using pictures on the internet in a way that they aren't licensed to. This is not particular to the UK, just because some site display a picture publically does not mean you are allowed to display the same picture on your site.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  That makes more sense than simply "pricing data" which is the focus of the article.
  - a2800276 4y ago
    The cease and desist letter stated: "proprietary images and data", I doubt a commercial/sponsored database of prices exists. That would have grave anti-cartell consequences. But you're right: for most reasonable people reading the article, the _only_ relevant data on trolley.co.uk _would_ be the price information. (And I don't have any insider knowledge, I was only guessing ...)

yobbo 4y ago

The "data company" does not "own" the data. Especially not if it was collected independently by trolley.co.uk. And old case that is sometimes used to illustrate how copyright works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

gpderetta 4y ago
That's not really relevant for the UK, where indeed there is such a thing as database copyright.
- yobbo 4y ago
  Only relevant if they are actually duplicating the "data company's" database; which is not what web-scraping is. For example; creating a map from air photographs is not "duplicating" another geo coded database. The geo data exists independently of any map. "Database rights" are not the same as "data rights", and if your "database" is inadvertently and routinely recreated as by product of other processes, then "database rights" can not apply. Otherwise we are in absurd world. (In this absurd world, a phone book company could charge license fees to everyone with a phone because their phone books would necessarily contain a subset of the global phone book.)
  - notahacker 4y ago
    The UK has FootballDataCo which historically "owned" the fact a football match between two clubs will be held on a particular date, irrespective of how the publisher found out that fact. So UK law has not alway been sensible about this. The EU Court of Justice threw that out, but we're not in the EU any more...

captaincaveman 4y ago

The images are obviously going to be copyrighted, I suspect the product information is also likely sourced from third party, and thus you would be infringing database rights by scraping. I find it very unlikely that the price of the products is provided by thirdparty data provider, and think the actual price is not covered by them despite them suggesting it might be.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
Yes, if they scrape prices from supermarkets' websites then prices come from supermarkets, they are the ones setting those prices after all. Really, they don't need product data beyond the name. They could drop pictures and detailed data and build their own database by crowdsourcing pictures and data from their users.
yobbo 4y ago
> The images are obviously going to be copyrighted Copyrights are inadvertent and sometimes unintuitive. If the images are created by the product manufacturers, then they hold the copyrights. If the supermarkets edit the images, then they hold copyrights to these edits. Likewise, if trolley edits the images (undoing the supermarket edits, like cropping around some text) then trolley together with the manufacturer holds the copyright for this new image, not the supermarket. It doesn't matter where it was scraped from or who was hosting the image, just as it doesn't matter which camera was used.

jpswade 4y ago

Sounds like extortion…

abigail95 4y ago

move to a jurisdiction with more reasonable IP laws

nly 4y ago

Once these guys pay the £29K, you can be sure next year the fee will to up 5-10x

rdxm 4y ago

janmo 4y ago

The title is misleading. Never do they mention the price data. After doing some research it appears that what is really the cause for concern are the product images.

em1sar 4y ago
yeah it's a scam just don't donate to these people
- janmo 4y ago
  They should ask people to take a picture of the products for them, instead of raising 30k USD/year to send the money to a fortune 500 company.
undecisive 4y ago
> Never do they mention the price data. After doing some research... Can you share your research? Because the cease and desist letter they link to clearly says "images and data"...
- janmo 4y ago
  The "data" they mention are product descriptions. The issuer of the cease and desist appears to be NielsenIQ. And they don't provide price data. Their main product is to provide standardised product images with a white/transparent background, and small product descriptions. Their customers being big E-Commerce stores.

tomgp 4y ago

From their FAQ I think these are the key bits of information: >What does the data company do? >The data company digitises and maintains the product information for 98% of grocery products in the UK. They’ve generously worked with us to bring this cost as low as possible. >Why are you not giving the name of the data company? >Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. We appreciate that the data company is absolutely entitled to request compensation for their work. We know that providing the name of the data company could bring negative implications for them which we wouldn’t want - especially with how generous they’ve already been.

undecisive 4y ago

There's a lot in here that's infuriating. > Maintaining this data for over 200,000 products is a costly endeavour and asking them to offer this for free would be a huge ask. No. Whoever (as someone pointed out, probably Brandbank, they supply most of the supermarkets with data so if it isn't them, then it's likely a scam) has already received full pay for the data they've supplied - if they're charging you again for the data, that's just greed (sorry, I mean "perfectly valid capitalism") - even at 14p/entry or whatever they're charging. Some people here have mentioned that facts can't be copyrighted - it reminds me of a problem in 2011 that the people distributing timezone data to a bunch of open source projects were sued because a 3rd party software house "owned" the rights to that data[1]. I don't know where that landed (timezones still work in linux, so I think they found a workaround) but most projects like this capitulate rather than risk the cost of court. But yes, the product descriptions and images may be copyrightable - certainly, Brandbank do all their imagery in-house, and any typos in the descriptions will be owned by them, because some person being paid peanuts - likely somewhere in the Philippines - is having to sit down with a photo of the can of Campbells soup, reading and re-typing the descriptions word for word. It's just... ugh. [1] https://www.wired.com/2011/10/time-zone-data-lawsuit/ https://www.wired.com/2011/10/time-zone-data-lawsuit/

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meena123456 4y ago