A legal battle over copyright of property pictures in the United States involving OnTheMarket owner CoStar, could have implications in the UK.

CoStar Group, which also owns American portal Homes.com, is suing rival Zillow for “rampant copyright infringement”.

Brazen

A lawsuit against Zillow has been filed by CoStar in a New York federal court alleging “the infringement could hardly be more brazen”.

CoStar accuses Zillow of “unlawfully exploiting” tens of thousands of CoStar’s watermarked photographs on its sites including Redfin and Realtor.com, which are owned by Zillow.

Largest case

Zillow, which is the largest portal in the US, stands accused in “one of the largest, if not the largest, image infringement cases in history”, CoStar says.

CoStar argues it has invested billions of dollars in creating the world’s largest library of real estate photographs.

It has employed or hired thousands of professional photographers, who have created millions of real estate images, including over two million original photos annually.

And CoStar accuses Zillow of publishing more than 46,000 of CoStar’s pictures, and displaying those images more than 250,000 times.

Outrageous

Andy Florance, Founder and CEO at CoStar Group, says: “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. Even worse, Zillow is magnifying its infringement on Redfin and Realtor.com,” he says.

“If these other sites do not immediately remove our images, we will have no choice but to sue them as well. We are committed to stopping this systematic infringement and holding the wrongdoers to account.”

Zillow declined to comment when approached by Reuters.