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The dispute between Realtor.com and CoStar’s Homes.com has been filed in court.
Move, Inc., the parent company of Realtor.com, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in California on Tuesday, accusing a former Move employee who now works at CoStar of stealing trade secrets that fueled Homes.com’s rapid growth into an industry-leading portal.
The lawsuit marks a rapid escalation of a long-running feud between the portal giants, which came after Homes.com promoted a major traffic benchmark in March that Realtor.com disputed earlier this year reached a climax.
“There is nothing wrong with legitimate competition, even vigorous competition,” Move, Inc. wrote in its complaint. “But competitors should never be allowed to cheat and steal to succeed.”
In its complaint, Move Repeat accusations Speaking at the Realtors Legislative Conference MLS Forum in Washington, D.C., in March, CEO Damian Eales said Homes.com’s claim to be the second-largest portal after Zillow was fabricated, and that Realtor.com was outperforming in traffic and impressions. Ranked second in terms of.
The company has previously disputed the CoStar CEO’s claims Andy FlorenceHomes.com It is the second most trafficked real estate portal, ahead of Redfin and Realtor.com.
Move, which is owned by media group News Corp, acknowledged that Homes.com had grown into a “significant player” in the real estate portal space but did not relinquish its No. 2 spot. But the company insists in its complaint that the growth was driven in part by an employee who left Move to work at CoStar as part of a “desperate” effort to increase web traffic.
According to Move’s complaint, James Kaminsky, a former Move employee who now works for Move’s direct competitor CoStar, systematically hacked into Move’s secure computer systems, secretly stole Move’s trade secrets, and monitored Move’s real-time secrets. electronic documents, thus causing huge losses to CoStar.
A spokesman for Realtor.com declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for CoStar Group dismissed the complaint as a distraction.
“This lawsuit is the latest desperate attempt by Realtor.com to overtake Homes.com as the second-largest portal based on the parties’ own site-centric data collection tools,” said CoStar General Counsel Gene Boxer. It’s distracting.
Kaminski was the former head of the news and insights group at Realtor.com, where he worked for nine years. The complaint says he is now an editor at Homes.com and cites his experience LinkedIn profile.
In that role, Move said Kaminski oversaw a team of writers that was developing a digital product it said was similar to its own news and insights product, which was key to Realtor.com’s marketing strategy part.
According to Move’s complaint, Mr. Kaminski stole confidential business messages while away from Move and sent them to his personal email account on the last day he had access to Move’s computer systems. He established secret, undetected persistent access, allowing himself (and CoStar) to monitor Move’s highly confidential files stored on protected computer systems. 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.
Move alleges Kaminski accessed Realtor.com information “at least 37 times after CoStar hired him,” violating federal and state computer fraud laws in the process.
According to Move, the documents include information about the themes and content of Realtor.com’s plans; ideas for future stories; metrics showing user traffic; a contact list; a list of Realtor.com employees and their salaries; and other private business information.
Kaminsky left Move in January and joined CoStar in March, according to his LinkedIn profile. Move said Kaminsky accessed Realtor.com’s files during June but went undetected.
“Obviously, our goal was to assist CoStar in unlawfully launching the creation of CoStar’s ‘monetization engine’ by increasing the number of visitors to the website and increasing CoStar’s revenue and profits,” Move wrote in the complaint.
CoStar’s Boxer downplayed Kaminsky’s role at the company in a statement, calling the employee a “mid-level manager who writes and edits apartment stories.”
“It’s safe to say that he had zero input into Homes.com’s strategy. Even Move’s creative writing campaign made no pretense of any wrongdoing by CoStar itself,” Boxer said. “This is a PR stunt that has backfired. Realtor.com is losing the battle with Homes.com and its attempts to change the story do not change the reality. We look forward to winning in court.”
Move says web traffic is the “lifeblood” of real estate portals because consumers want to use the most popular platforms and real estate professionals want to advertise where consumers are searching.
The lawsuit highlights an ongoing feud that began when CoStar announced in October that it ranked second in web traffic among major real estate portals.
In February, CoStar launched $1 billion advertising campaign Designed to increase traffic to Homes.com.
Realtor.com has publicly challenged that claim multiple times, including in a lawsuit.
“Realtor.com has been the second most visited residential real estate listing site in the United States for many years, behind only Zillow and according to data from all independent third-party sources that Move can identify, such as Comscore, Nielsen, Similar Web or SEM Rush. Ahead of Redfin,” Move wrote in the complaint. “Homes.com ranks at the bottom of the top four by every independent third-party measure. “
Move is seeking unspecified damages in the jury trial.
Read the full complaint here.
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