This article references The Greater Greater Washington Blog, which has been doing an exceptional job of covering the transit data intellectual property discussion. I wanted to give them a specific shout-out. -ed

While negotiating with MTA on the phone regarding license terms, I was expressly told by their departments that they could not negotiate any license terms, as if they did, they would have to go back and change the terms for all licensees.

This does not appear to be the case, however, as Google gets their data from MTA entirely for free:

After checking with their business development manager and MTA, Google’s Elaine Filadelfo confirmed for the record that Google does not pay MTA any fees under their agreement.

In addition to the specific denial about the MTA, Google Business Development Manager Tom Sly said, “I personally worked on many of our agreement with our transit partners over the last three years (including the MTA), and I am not aware of any instance of Google paying a transit agency for data.”

MTA has insisted that they own the intellectual property rights on their schedule data and insist that I pay them $5000 up front for their data in order to implement it into my iPhone application.

However, Google, who will easily earn FAR more money in advertising dollars serving up train schedule information than I ever will in iPhone app sales, has not been asked for any money by MTA whatsoever – neither has any transit agency.

So, why give this data to Google for free, and shake down lesser small businesses?

My opinion is that MTA knows they would never get a dime out of Google in a million years. Google has its own legal department and is undoubtedly on the cutting edge of internet and intellectual property law. They are not going to get nickled and dimed.

Also, MTA does not want to embarrass itself by being the only transit agency not cooperating with Google on its outstanding transit initiatives. It really has no choice but to work with Google.

Independent developers like myself, however, do not have those resources. MTA feels that through intimidation and litigation, they can easily get money out of small businesses like me, or put them out of business trying, by asserting copyrights they do not own.