• by Ray Schultz , 7 hours ago

Zillow, the real estate website, was slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit by CoStar Group last week for allegedly copying tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s photos on its site without permission. 

The complaint claims that Zillow “is displaying — and profiting from — nearly 47,000 CoStar-copyrighted images on Zillow.com and other Zillow sites. Many of these images include the CoStar watermark. And in many instances, an image appears on multiple different Zillow pages and different versions of listings, such that the images are displayed in total over 250,000 times." 

The filing continues that “Zillow’s misconduct is not limited to the Zillow family of websites. Through lucrative syndication agreements, Zillow is also distributing CoStar’s images to its partnership network of listing websites, hosted by Zillow’s supposed competitors, Realtor.com and Redfin.”

The complaint asks for permanent injunctive relief and a substantial award of damages. Realtor.com and Redfin are not defendants in the case. 

“Zillow’s theft of tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s copyrighted photographs is nothing short of outrageous. Zillow is profiting from decades of CoStar Group work and the billions of dollars we have invested,” says Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group.

Florance continues, “ Even worse, Zillow is magnifying its infringement on Redfin and Realtor.com. If these other sites do not immediately remove our images, we will have no choice but to sue them as well.”

CoStar owns websites listing apartments (Apartments.com), single-family homes (Homes.com), and commercial real estate (LoopNet.com). 

Zillow had not filed a response to the suit at deadline. 

The case is on file with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.