CoStar Group files copyright infringement lawsuit against Zillow

CoStar Group (CSGP) filed a lawsuit in New York federal court alleging rampant copyright infringement by Zillow (Z). The company said, “The infringement could hardly be more brazen. The complaint shows that Zillow is unlawfully exploiting tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s watermarked photographs on its sites and on Redfin and Realtor.com, making this one of the largest, if not the largest, image infringement cases in history. Since its founding, CoStar Group has invested billions of dollars in creating the most comprehensive database of real estate information. As part of its efforts, CoStar Group has built the world’s largest library of real estate photographs. Over decades, CoStar Group has employed or hired thousands of professional photographers who have created millions of real estate images, which are owned and copyrighted by CoStar Group. CoStar Group’s team of dedicated architectural photographers takes, and the company copyrights, over two million original real estate photos annually. Rather than invest in its own website, people, and intellectual property, Zillow has engaged in rampant copyright infringement. Zillow has published more than 46,000 CoStar Group images, many with the distinctive CoStar watermark, displaying those images more than 250,000 times on Zillow alone. Zillow’s mass infringement is compounded by Zillow’s recent partnerships with its purported competitors, Redfin and Realtor.com, under which Zillow is the sole provider of multifamily listings on all three websites. Zillow is amplifying its infringement by publishing CoStar’s images on both Redfin and Realtor.com. There is no question that Zillow’s misconduct is deliberate. Zillow is a repeat offender that has been found to infringe images before: the listings platform had to pay millions of dollars after a jury found Zillow liable for copyright infringement claims brought by real estate photography studio VHT, Inc.”