action company.,parent company real estate agent networkProsecuting KeXing Groupthe competitor’s parent company Homes.com, Suspected of stealing portal information and files.
Move alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in California that James Kaminsky, a former employee who now works for CoStar, stole trade secrets to help fuel Homes.com’s rapid growth.
“There is nothing wrong with legitimate competition, even vigorous competition,” the lawsuit states. “But competitors should never be allowed to cheat and steal to succeed.”
Move said Kaminski accessed Realtor.com files during June of this year without being discovered, even though he left the company in January and joined CoStar in March. According to the complaint, Kaminski “accessed Realtor.com’s information at least 37 times after CoStar hired him,” and in doing so violated federal and state computer fraud laws.
Move alleges that the documents Kaminski accessed included information about Realtor.com’s planned content; ideas for future stories; metrics showing user traffic; contact lists; a list of Realtor.com employees and their salaries; and other private business information.
Kaminski spent nine years at Realtor.com, leading its news and insights group. According to him, he left the company in January and joined CoStar two months later, where he currently serves as editor. LinkedIn Page. Move alleges in the complaint that in his new position, Kaminsky is leading a team of writers that is developing a product similar to Realtor.com, which Move says is an integral part of Realtor.com’s marketing strategy.
“When Mr. Kaminsky left Move, he stole confidential business messages and sent them to his personal email account on the last day he had access to Move computer systems. He established a secret, undetectable “continuous access privileges allowed themselves (and CoStar) to monitor Move’s highly confidential files stored on protected computer systems,” the complaint states. Then, in an effort to cover his tracks, Mr. Kaminski deleted nearly a thousand files from his Move computer and cleared his entire browsing history before returning the device to Move.
“Apparently, our goal was to help CoStar unlawfully initiate the creation of a ‘monetization engine’ by increasing the number of visitors to the website and increasing CoStar’s revenue and profits,” the complaint continues.
This is the latest development in a long-running feud between Homes.com and Realtor.com. The two have spent the past few months arguing over who holds the title of second-largest listing portal. ZilloRealtor.com claims that Homes.com’s claims that it is the second largest portal in terms of traffic and impressions are false.
The legal action reiterated many of these arguments.
“According to each independent third-party source that Move can identify, e.g. Comsk, Nelson, Similar sitesor Scanning electron microscope boom — Realtor.com has for many years been the second most visited residential real estate listing website in the United States, behind Zillow and ahead of Redfin,” Move’s complaint states. “Homes.com ranks last among the top four by all independent third-party measures.”
The company is seeking damages and a jury trial.
CoStar did not respond to a request for comment.
