ZILLOW HIT WITH ANOTHER LAWSUIT

 

LAWSUITS

Zillow slapped with patent suit

John Cook on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 4:57pm PDT

 

Zillow.com has been hit with another patent lawsuit. The Seattle online real estate company was sued last month by First American CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, California-based with more than 10,000 employees and annual revenue of $2.1 billion. The provider of business information services alleges in its suit that Zillow, along with seven other companies, violated patents related to automated home valuation services.
The lawsuit -- filed April 16-- was first reported today by Inman News. And it follows a separate lawsuit filed in March by SmarterAgent, which alleges that Zillow and other companies violated patents related to how consumers access real estate information on mobile phones.
CoreLogic's suit could be the more serious of the two since it impacts the automated valuations that Zillow features both on its Web site and mobile phones. The deep pockets of CoreLogic also could be a serious concern.
A spokeswoman for Zillow said they've seen the suit and they don't have a comment on it. In addition to Zillow, the patent suit names as defendants: Fiserv, Intellireal, Interthinx, Lender Processing Services, Precision Appraisal Services, Real Data and Realec Technologies.
As it relates to Zillow, the suit says:

On information and belief, Zillow manufactures, offers for sale, sells, uses or induces the same, systems falling within the scope of one or more of the claims of the ’201 Patent, including, but not limited to, Zillow.com. As a result, Zillow has infringed, literally and/or by equivalents, continues to infringe, and/or threatens infringement of one or more of the claims of the ’201 Patent as defined by 35 U.S.C. § 271. Plaintiff has suffered damage by reason of Zillow’s infringement and will continue to suffer additional damage until this Court enjoins the infringing conduct. On information and belief, Zillow is contributing to and/or inducing the infringement of one or more claims of the ’201 Patent by offering to sell and selling its systems, including, but not limited to, the current and preceding versions of Zillow.com, to customers, buyers, sellers, users and others that directly infringe the ’201 Patent.

The '201 patent -- titled “Real Estate Appraisal Using Predictive Modeling” -- was issued to the company in 1994. [Full suit here