Many companies (D&B etc.) sell databases of information about companies including financial metrics, nicknames, major products, competitors, suppliers, consumers, top executives, sector (taxonomy node), acquisitions of companies, mergers, etc.

Does anyone on this list know of work on ontologies for this sort of industry, company, and product structure information?

The taxonomy approach has all the standard problems with trees (is the French steel industry taxonomized as a steel node somewhere under France, or vice versa?) and there are all kinds of inference you'd like to do: e.g. Wyeth makes Advil; Advil is a brand of ibuprofen; ibuprofen is an analgesic; therefore Wyeth makes analgesics.

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