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European German car database

On 3 June 2022 a lawyer sent me a “cease & desist” letter to stop selling German car database. Feel free to browse other databases available on my website.

Happened before to receive cease & desist letters when I created Excel database from an API seller for people who need to store data locally, case in which API was not an option. In order to respect other businesses, I tried creating databases by scraping data ONLY for websites that do not make business from selling data.

Allgemeiner Deutsche Automobil-Club e.V. (ADAC.de) created one of the largest car databases in the world: over 140,000 car versions, with over 250 fields of specifications. All data is freely accessible HERE: https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/autokatalog/marken-modelle/ and I never seen option to purchase / download data, nor any TOS that forbid copying data. Customers asked me to extract data from ADAC, which I did, and sold here as Excel database, until…

I received a cease & desist letter (in Romanian) written by a lawyer from Romania allegedly hired by ADAC, requesting me to stop selling and delete database with data scraped from ADAC.de, or I will be subject of lawsuit and pay damages. While initially I though that is a non-sense intimidation attempt, a short conversation revealed that ADAC does sell their data as well, although not obvious from their website. I wished to be informed earlier, before having so many customers left without updates. In this case I publicly apologize for any losses I caused and infringing their intellectual property rights.

The lawyer requested me to direct new customers interested in having the largest car database in the world, and past customers who previously purchased from me and needing updates, to purchase data legally from ADAC. How much does cost and how someone can purchase when www.adac.de does not state anything about selling data… I will announce once I get more details from ADAC or local lawyer. Communication is slow because lawyer translate every reply from German to Romanian.

If any ADAC employee read this, please contact me directly instead of wasting time through third-party lawyers and translations.

9 comments

  1. The database i received has far exceeded my expectations, not only by the size but also from the attention to detail from the seller.

    I needed a custom database with some special columns and teoalida offered to update it to my database FREE of charge!
    That’s right!

    Support was exceptional and i had really a pleasure to work with!

    Also teoalida is a very nice and friendly guy always eager to help you.
    So if you need a well maintained car database you came to the right place.

  2. Hi!

    Our vehicle e-com platvorm have to control from EU/Worldwide vehicle database “technical details” (see below) and “features”

    Situatsion:
    Client want to sell or trade-in his vehicle to us then he have to go fill forms on our platvorm which usually starts from vehicle VIN on REG NUMBER and then he have to fill punch of forms (see below) then after we can do the automatic estimate for the client vehicle.
    We need from your database according to car make and model:
    1. VIN NUMBER OR REGISTRATION NUMBER
    2. MILEAGE
    3. COLOR
    4. TRANSMISSION
    5. DRIVETRAIN
    6. ENGINE
    7. ACCESSORY PACKAGES
    8. COMFORT & CONVENIENCE
    9. ENTERTAINMENT & INSTRUMENTATION
    10. SAFETY & SECURITY
    11. SEATS
    12. LIGHTING
    13. WHEELS & TIRES
    14. CARGO & TOWING

    PS! Some data we will get from a national open database (!first 6 bullets) https://eteenindus.mnt.ee/public/soidukTaustakontroll.jsf?lang=en but not all. Left over 8 bullets we want to get from your database.

    Our question: Do you have these kind database. We are based in EU so that I think fits wordlwide or EU based data.

    To be more confident that you understand our problem then let’s to make a quick call or I can make a video.

    Please let me know.

    Best wishes,
    Anti Schulz

    I hope

    Please tell me do you have any database what we can use in our website to ?

    1. You also sent me an email, which I replied on 8 April and sent you a follow-up on 5 May too, but did not heard any reply from your side

      This Germany database may be best option for you, it does have ~50 columns of features, tires dimensions, cargo capacity and towing capacity. I am afraid that can’t help you with comfort and entertainment features for Europe (I do have these in America and India databases). Also what kind of data would have seats and lighting?

  3. Hi, I am interested in purchasing German car database but noticed that it been taken down. Do you have an ETA when it will be available again?

    1. Probably will NEVER be available again. Romanian lawyer hired by ADAC.de request me to visit their office in Bucharest and sign a commitment that:

      1. I will stop scraping and sell German car database.
      2. I will report sales I did for German car database.
      3. I will direct all my customers needing updates and future customers to purchase data directly from ADAC.
      4. I will pay 4280 EURO cost of preparing letter (including German-Romanian translations).
      5. for each violation of above I will pay 5000 EURO damages.

      They are threatening me that I don’t sign commitment to close dispute friendly, ADAC will sue me and request damages 20,000 EURO x 7 years of “selling database illegally” (a bit exaggerated, 1st sale I did in 2017). Nobody can obligate me to report how many sales I did, and I don’t even keep sales logs older than 1-2 years. I requested a talk to an ADAC representative who speak english, to discuss faster without costly translations via Romanian lawyer. So far no success…

      ADAC is a huge company and I don’t want to risk legal troubles with them. The only risk is that someone seeing me no longer taking risk of selling this database, will start selling same database himself.

      1. Hey,
        i scanned through both PDF and could not find proof the laywers are ACTUALLY hired by ADAC.

        ADAC does not have any office I could find in Romania and they also do not sell the car data (at least not publically).
        There is no subscription or anything and you are not causing any “damages” which they could claim to my understanding,
        at least not based on german law….

        In Germany they would not stand a chance as they are offering a free unlimited product anyone can use, they don’t have any TOS
        that says its forbidden and European law does not have anything here as well, it’ll be totally up to the court to decide and I bet they’d
        loose here as they would have to tell where THEY have the data from and also car data is public knowledge to quite some extend.

        I can see two things here,
        A: Its really ADAC and for whatever weird reason they think based on romanian law they’d have a chance
        B: Its fake

        I would totally try to contact ADAC directly and ask them, worst that could happen you learn its actually legit.
        But i’d be totally surprised if it was.

  4. This is a SCAM. They just threat you to rip money off from you. Do not get scared by “lawyers” Teoalida, please make database available again. You have data that cannot be found anywhere else.

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