im planning on making a website listing all the restaurants, location and contact info, and their menus in my town. i wont ask the restaurant owners for permission to list them, I willjust list them. some restarurants I will grab their paper takeout menus and scan them into my website. other restaurants like Chillis and fine dinning i will ask a manager for their menu to scan and then return it. I will also have a comment section attached to each restaruants page so the public can leave feedback. im aware that people might leave very negative feed back so i will flag negative posts as to not ruin business for the restaurants. does anyone know of any legal issues i may encounter in doing a site like this?? the reason i do not want to get the owners to sign permission on a contract is becasue there is too much restaurants and catching the owners in the establishment is very unlikely.
Buy a list from a third party like InfoUSA. Follow their usage guidelines and legal responibility ultimately falls upon them.
I wouldn't scan the menu without permission as that's technically copyright infringement. Don't ask the manager of a local restaurant if that establishment is part of a chain. The manager doesn't have the authority to allow you to copy company-owned information, presentations and so forth. The one exception might be something that's specific to that particular location only. And here's the final line. Get a lawyer.
As above, there are interlectual property rights issues if you are using their menus (copyright), name (trademark) or logo (copyright or trademark) without express permission. You also need to make sure that the people giving permission do have the right to do so. Many small places will have had logos done on the cheap and may not own the copyright themselves as this adds a lot to the costs and many chains will have central legal/ marketing departments who control usage and not local managers. If this is a for profit project your risk increases much more even if it is just google adsense you have running for a bit of pocket money. As the owner of the site you will potentially also be liable for any deformation that other people post. Generally if you respond quickly to complaints it isnt much of an issue but that wont prevent people trying it on. Need to firstly get a good set of terms and conditions written by a solicitor to mitigate your liabilities and secondly have a webhost that isnt going to pull your site the second they receive a complaint. Solicitors are expensive but being sued for loss of earnings due to deformation and a breach of IP rights is much more expensive
I don't know if I would actually put the chained restaurants in your restaurant directory. Most people know what Chili serves and what it taste like to them. I don't know many people who go to a restaurant directory to view chili's menu, they will most likely go to chili's.com If you want it to be affective I would just use smaller restaurants (local) restaurants and just widen your coverage area.
wow thanks for the helpful advice. so it sounds like scanning in the menus is where I will run into potential problems. question #1: what if I just do a list with the restaruants location, phone, hours of operation. question #2: also I will take a picture of the store from the street to show the building, is this a problem? question #3: what if i take chilis menu and type it in maunally rather then scan their menu as an image?
answer #1 - That should be done anyways for each restaurant answer #2 - This should be done also I pretty much figured these would be the basics for a restaurant directory answer #3 - If you typed it, It would still be a problem just go to chili's.com contact them tell them what you are doing and ask for permission. Shouldn't be to difficult and I doubt they will care
1) Again, you are potentially using trademarks so technically should ask permission first 2) Check local law - in the UK it would be legal for most buildings but there are some historic sites where the building itself is protected under IP law 3) Still copyright breach but much more likely that the resturant owns the copyright to the text even if they dont own the rights to the images etc
I'm in the USA and under out laws, you could "possibly" type in the menu provided that the format is completely different. It could be argued that Chili's having baby-backed ribs is a FACT and facts are not protected under copyright laws, only the manner in which they are displayed. If this is a project you plan on spending a fair amount of money and time on, spend some money on a lawyer and get concrete answers for your situation.
You could also look into places that deliver in your area and do not have it available through their websites and make it available to order on your webpage which basically would consist of a php form and it would go straight to the businesses email for delivery. I website in my area did this (college town with alot of people ordering) and they are making six figures on the website after the first year