Publishing contact info of businesses on my site

What is the name of your state? IL

I want to start a website that displays the contact information of the businesses in the area, like an online yellow pages. This includes name, address, and phone number. Is it ok to get that info from the phone book and publish it on my website without the company's permission? Contacting every company to ask for permission to display their contact info on my site would be too time consuming, but I cant see why any company wouldnt enjoy the extra exposure and the contact information is already publicaly available, but I just want to be sure.

Also, I want to display these pages in categories like a phone book does. And being that all this is coming from the phone book, will I have any problems with the company who publishes the phone book?

Thanks.

"This includes name, address, and phone number. Is it ok to get that info from the phone book and publish it on my website without the company's permission? "

Yes, this is all public information.

"Also, I want to display these pages in categories like a phone book does. And being that all this is coming from the phone book, will I have any problems with the company who publishes the phone book?"

Depends. Anybody can sue anybody for anything; if the existing online yellow pages thinks that your version looks too much like yours, they could come after you. However, the presentation of data, such as phone numbers, is afforded much less protection under copyright than are "creative" works, since there are only a finite number of ways to display such data that makes sense. As long as you are not copying their layout verbatim, you would likely be okay. As always, the advice of local counsel experienced in copyright would be useful. You could also check out Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Company, 449 U.S. 340 (1991) for some information peritent to this topic.

Thanks for your replies divgradcurl. I'll look into Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Company for additional info.