Lithuania Company Lookup: A Cap and an Open Licence

A Lithuania company lookup runs through the Juridinių asmenų registras (JAR), the Register of Legal Entities, kept by valstybės įmonė Registrų centras — the State Enterprise Centre of Registers. The free search is at registrucentras.lt/jar; open data sits at registrucentras.lt/atviri-duomenys-ir-statistika and on data.gov.lt. This guide covers the two doors into the same register, a licence condition most data users will not expect, and a search trap the registrar warns about itself. If you need the Lithuanian population rather than one company at a time, the Lithuania company directory covers the same registered entities with industry, size and contact breakdowns attached, and the Lithuania business database is the same file described as a dataset.

Lithuania company lookup: the short version

• The free public search is capped at 100 lookups a day, and more detailed registration data is chargeable, through a contract or through the self-service system.
• The same register is published as open data under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — reusable and distributable for any purpose.
• The licence carries a condition most data users will not expect: you must state the source and the date on which the information was obtained.
• Searching on a legal-form abbreviation finds entities with that string in their name, not entities of that form.

Two doors, and the register prints both

Read the free search page and the open-data page in the same sitting and you find the same register described twice, in two very different registers of language.

The search page carries a notice:

"Dėmesio! Detalesni juridinių asmenų registravimo duomenys yra mokami ir gali būti teikiami šiais būdais: registruotiems vartotojams, sudariusiems paslaugų teikimo sutartį; Registrų centro savitarnos sistemoje, apmokant už teikiamus duomenis per e.bankininkystės sistemas. Jums per dieną leidžiama atlikti iki 100 viešų paieškų."

Attention! More detailed legal entity registration data is chargeable and may be provided in these ways: to registered users who have concluded a service provision contract; or in the Registrų centras self-service system, paying for the data provided through e-banking systems. You are allowed to perform up to 100 public searches per day.

The open-data page describes the same register:

"Atviri duomenys yra laisvai prieinami Registrų centro tvarkomuose registruose ar informacinėse sistemose sukaupti duomenys ar jų dalis, kuriuos visi asmenys gali pakartotinai naudoti ir platinti bet kokiu tikslu, nurodydami jų šaltinį ir tik tomis pačiomis sąlygomis, kuriomis buvo gauti."

Open data is freely accessible data, or parts of it, accumulated in the registers or information systems managed by Registrų centras, which all persons may reuse and distribute for any purpose, stating its source and only under the same conditions under which it was obtained.

A capped, partly chargeable search and an any-purpose open licence, over the same register, on adjacent pages of the same agency's site. That is not a contradiction — it is two products with different shapes, and the practical consequence is that which door you use is a decision rather than a default. A reader who needs a handful of lookups uses the search and may never hit the cap. A reader who needs a population should not be paginating a 100-a-day search at all; the open data is the route, and the register says so by publishing both.

What the register does here that many do not is make the trade explicit. The number is printed on the page where it bites, and the licence is printed on the page where it applies. Neither has to be discovered.

The licence asks for the date

The condition worth the most attention is short, and it is the one a data business should notice:

"Naudojant duomenis būtina nurodyti informacijos šaltinį ir datą, kada informacija buvo gauta, taip pat užtikrinti, kad nebus pažeistos kitų asmenų teisės ir teisėti interesai."

When using the data it is necessary to state the source of the information and the date on which the information was obtained, and also to ensure that the rights and legitimate interests of other persons are not infringed.

Source and retrieval date. Attribution requirements are ordinary; a requirement to carry the date you obtained it is not, at least not among the registers covered in this series. It is a requirement that a reuse be dated, which means it cannot be satisfied once at the point of download and forgotten — a derived product that outlives its extract still has to say when the extract was taken.

The licence itself is named: "Duomenys atverti pagal tarptautinę Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licenciją […] Duomenis galima naudoti ir dalintis neribotai, tačiau privaloma nurodyti atvertų duomenų autorystę, įdėti nuorodą į licenciją bei nurodyti, ar buvo padaryta pakeitimų." — opened under the international Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; the data may be used and shared without limit, but it is obligatory to attribute authorship, include a link to the licence, and state whether changes were made. Questions about open data go to atviriduomenys@registrucentras.lt.

This page states the condition and does not advise on how to satisfy it. And it does not claim the dating obligation is unusual in law — only that it is unusual among the registers this series has covered, which is what the material supports.

Five states, five answers

Lithuania is the fifth European register in this series to write down what may be done with data it publishes, and the five answers do not sit on one axis.

• The Czech Republic company lookup guide covers a statute defining open data as information "jejichž způsob ani účel následného využití není omezen" — whose manner and purpose of subsequent use is not restricted.
• The Belgium company lookup guide covers terms stating that "Personal data may not be reused for direct marketing purposes" — a restriction on purpose.
• The Hungary company lookup guide covers a decree under which the free service does not extend to obtaining the register's data in whole or in significant part — a restriction on volume.
• The Norway company lookup guide covers documentation stating that an overview of a person's roles across undertakings may only show roles connected to commercial activity — a restriction on combination.
• Lithuania publishes under a licence, with attribution, a link, a change statement and a retrieval date.

Five states, five answers, and this page does not rank them, call it a spectrum, or describe a trend. They are not stricter and looser versions of one rule — they restrict different things, and two of them restrict nothing at all in the dimension another restricts most. The only conclusion the material supports is the practical one: each country's own words are the only reliable guide to that country, and a process shaped by one of them says nothing about the next.

What a Lithuanian company register entry contains

A self-contained summary. Lithuania's register of legal entities is the Juridinių asmenų registras (JAR), kept by valstybės įmonė Registrų centras, the State Enterprise Centre of Registers, with a free search at registrucentras.lt/jar. The search page states that more detailed legal entity registration data is chargeable and may be provided to registered users who have concluded a service provision contract, or through the Registrų centras self-service system paying via e-banking systems, and that a user is allowed to perform up to 100 public searches per day. Services for users who have concluded a data-provision contract with Registrų centras and hold an issued username and password are separate from the public search. The registrar warns that a search on words that merely denote a legal form returns entities whose names contain those words symbolically: searching "AB" finds the entity Uždaroji akcinė bendrovė "AB" but not entities where AB is the legal-form abbreviation. Separately, Registrų centras publishes open data: freely accessible data accumulated in the registers or information systems it manages, which all persons may reuse and distribute for any purpose, stating its source and only under the same conditions under which it was obtained. Using the data requires stating the source of the information and the date on which the information was obtained, and ensuring that the rights and legitimate interests of other persons are not infringed. The data is opened under the international Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; it may be used and shared without limit, but attribution of authorship, a link to the licence and a statement of whether changes were made are obligatory. Questions about open data go to atviriduomenys@registrucentras.lt. Registrų centras also publishes an electronic bulletin carrying public notices of legal persons and notices of the Registrar, which can be viewed free of charge. This summary does not describe the fields of a register entry, because none was established from the registrar's own pages on the date shown.

Searching a legal form finds a name

The registrar publishes a search caveat that is easy to read past and expensive to miss.

A search on words that merely denote a legal form returns entities whose names contain those words symbolically. The registrar's own example: searching "AB" finds the entity Uždaroji akcinė bendrovė "AB" — a company whose registered name happens to be the two letters — but not entities where AB is the legal-form abbreviation.

In other words the search matches the name string, not the entity type. Anyone trying to enumerate all companies of a given legal form through the search is not doing that at all; they are finding the small number of companies that happen to be named after the abbreviation. It is a false-positive and false-negative failure in one, and the returned set looks perfectly plausible.

Where a Lithuania lookup stops

Registrų centras publishes an electronic bulletin carrying public notices of legal persons and notices of the Registrar, and states "Leidinius galite peržiūrėti neatlygintinai" — the bulletins can be viewed free of charge. That is where changes are announced, and it is a free route alongside the capped search.

The contracted route is named but not described beyond its existence: services for users who have concluded a data-provision contract with Registrų centras and hold an issued username and password are separate from the public search. What those services return is not something this page states.

This page describes no field of a JAR entry, because none was sourced. LITHUANIA_REPORT.md names that gap along with one more consequential omission about how a particular class of entity is treated in a published dataset.

Where the question is a population rather than a company, a firmographic directory covers the same registered entities with classification, size and contact data attached and queryable as a set; the Europe company directory breaks the European file down by market.

Data quality pitfalls to avoid in Lithuania

Paginating the free search toward a population. It is capped at 100 public searches a day, and the open data is the published route for volume.

Searching a legal-form abbreviation to enumerate that form. The search matches the name string, so it returns companies named after the abbreviation rather than companies of that type.

Attributing without dating. The open-data condition requires the source and the date on which the information was obtained.

Assuming CC BY 4.0 is the whole obligation. Alongside the licence, the registrar states the requirement to ensure the rights and legitimate interests of other persons are not infringed.

Treating the free search and the open data as the same product. More detailed registration data is chargeable, through a contract or the self-service system.

Overlooking the bulletin. Public notices of legal persons and of the Registrar are published there and can be viewed free of charge.

A repeatable Lithuania company lookup workflow

1. Use the free search for individual lookups and stay inside the 100-a-day allowance.
2. Go to the open data for anything population-shaped rather than paginating the search.
3. Record the retrieval date with every extract, because the licence requires it downstream.
4. Carry the source, the licence link and a statement of changes into any derived product.
5. Never use a legal-form abbreviation as a search term to enumerate that form.
6. Check the electronic bulletin for notices, which are viewable free of charge.

Frequently asked questions

How many free searches can I do in Lithuania?

The search page states you are allowed to perform up to 100 public searches per day.

Is the Lithuanian register open data?

Yes. Registrų centras publishes freely accessible data from the registers it manages, which all persons may reuse and distribute for any purpose, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international licence.

What exactly does the licence require?

Attribution of authorship, a link to the licence, and a statement of whether changes were made — and, separately, stating the source of the information and the date on which it was obtained, and ensuring the rights and legitimate interests of other persons are not infringed.

Why do I have to record the retrieval date?

Because the registrar states it as a condition of use. Among the registers in this series that requirement is unusual; this page states it and does not advise on how to satisfy it.

Why does searching "AB" not return all AB companies?

Because the search matches the name. The registrar's example is that searching "AB" finds the entity Uždaroji akcinė bendrovė "AB" but not entities where AB is the legal-form abbreviation.

What is chargeable?

More detailed legal entity registration data, provided to registered users with a service provision contract or through the self-service system with payment by e-banking.

Is the bulletin free?

Yes. Registrų centras states the bulletins can be viewed free of charge, and they carry public notices of legal persons and notices of the Registrar.

Source Register

Every Lithuanian sentence quoted above is the registrar's own wording, read on the date shown, carrying its diacritics as written, with an English gloss beside it rather than in place of it. The 100-search daily allowance appears in the prose as a technical limit stated on the search page, not as a price; no fee, tariff or count appears anywhere.

This page describes no field of a JAR entry, because none was sourced, and it does not describe what the contracted services return. LITHUANIA_REPORT.md records both, with what would confirm each.

The readings that are InfobelPRO's rather than the registrar's: that the capped search and the open licence are two products with different shapes rather than a contradiction, so which door you use is a decision rather than a default; that a requirement to carry the retrieval date cannot be satisfied once at download and forgotten, because a derived product that outlives its extract still has to say when the extract was taken; and that the legal-form search behaviour is a false-positive and false-negative failure at once, whose returned set looks perfectly plausible. Those are ours. The five-country comparison sets out five published answers that restrict different things, and it is offered without ranking and without any claim of a trend.