This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.
CoStar has filed suit against Zillow, accusing the nation’s leading home search site of “outrageous” copyright infringement through its use of more than 46,000 CoStar-owned photos.
The case, filed in a New York federal court on July 30, includes claims Zillow is using watermarked images owned by CoStar Group — parent company of competing home search site Homes.com — on its sites and on Redfin and Realtor.com through its rental listings syndication deals.
A press release from CoStar calls this “one of the largest, if not the largest, image infringement cases in history” with potential for $1 billion in damages.
What CoStar had to say: “Zillow is profiting from decades of CoStar Group work and the billions of dollars we have invested,” CoStar CEO Andy Florance said via press release. “We are committed to stopping this systematic infringement and holding the wrongdoers to account.”
Florance also threatened to sue Redfin and Realtor.com if they “do not immediately remove our images.” Florance and Homes.com had previously been engaged in legal action with Realtor.com and parent company Move, Inc. over alleged trade secrets theft, which both parties agreed to dismiss in April.
Real Estate News has reached out to Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com for comment.
A closer look at the claims: CoStar says Zillow Group has been willfully using its images, primarily from Apartments.com, on multifamily rental listings displayed on Zillow.com as well as Trulia and HotPads, which are owned by Zillow Group, and Redfin and Realtor.com through syndication deals.
The suit includes examples of images with the CoStar logo obscured or cropped out when displayed on the Zillow site.
CoStar filed a similar lawsuit against Xceligent Inc., a now-bankrupt real estate data company, and won a $500,000 judgement.
In 2022, Zillow was ordered to pay $1.9 million to photography company VHT over its use of copyrighted images in a non-listings section of Zillow.com.
Zillow’s other court battle: Zillow is also facing a lawsuit from another industry titan: Compass. The nation’s largest brokerage — a leading advocate for private listings — filed suit against Zillow on June 23 in response to Zillow’s policy barring listings that are publicly marketed but not widely available via the MLS.
The move from CoStar comes just weeks after Florance made public remarks about Zillow’s Listing Access Standards, which Florance described as “outrageous bullying and intimidation.” Florance had also taken aim at Zillow partners Redfin and Realtor.com, referring to the group of companies as an “anticompetitive cartel.”
