"Muni spokesperson Judson True says otherwise. In fact, he says that, no, Muni owns the data in question and that the public is, of course, entitled to access it."

I paste this here, because it's at the very bottom of the article and it doesn't seem obvious to me that the arrival time of buses is public data that can be used for free. Well, that's what most of us wish but if Nextbus had made a deal with Muni to put their transponders on the buses in exchange of owning the data and giving it to Muni for free, it would be hard to argue otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if Muni actually got a special deal because I think I remember looking at this exact thing for the buses where I live and that it had to be licensed.

It's somewhat similar to satellite or map imaging, in that companies have invested money to gather the data. It is public data in one sense but that doesn't necessarily mean it can be used freely. I'm glad Muni spoke out and made it clear though.

Another example (of a similar kind of possible deal) would be JCDecaux which offered (I believe) bus-stops benches to cities in exchange of managing the advertising on them.

The link is heavily editorialized. The actual title of the article is: "Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times?"

Even if NextBus "owned" the data, it's unlikely any claims they made on it would be enforceable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Tel...

I am not a lawyer, and neither is wikipedia.