Costar, known for its platforms Homes.com and Apartments.com, is taking legal action against Zillow. The company asserts that Zillow has misappropriated numerous copyrighted images to bolster its operations.
In legal filings made this week in the Southern District of New York, Costar contends that “Zillow is attempting to address a pervasive and systematic violation of Costar’s copyrighted images.”
On June 30, Costar claimed that Zillow showcased images belonging to about 47,000 people on its various sites, profiting from those images. The lawsuit indicates that these images appeared across different Zillow pages and listings over 250,000 times.
Costar accused Zillow of extending its infringement beyond its own websites, stating that it shares their images with a network of partner sites—some of which are seen as competitors—through favorable syndication deals.
The company has reportedly invested billions into creating a vast database of real estate data, which includes what it describes as the “world’s largest real estate photography archive.” Costar mentioned that it has engaged thousands of professional photographers who have produced millions of copyrighted real estate images.
Fox Business has reached out to Zillow for a response regarding these allegations.
This lawsuit adds to the legal troubles Zillow is navigating. In fact, this is the second suit Zillow has faced in just five weeks. The previous lawsuit came from a real estate brokerage called Compass, which filed a detailed complaint in Manhattan federal court, claiming that Zillow inappropriately excluded homes listed elsewhere.
Compass is also seeking an injunction against Zillow, aiming to enforce compliance and financial penalties.
Zillow, based in Seattle, maintains a database of around 160 million homes and attracts about 227 million unique visitors monthly, totaling 2.4 billion visits from January to March. They dismissed the Compass lawsuit, labeling it as “basic,” and expressed a strong commitment to defending against these claims.
