CoStar Goes After Rival Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

Commercial real estate data is big business, and CoStar’s share price has rocketed in recent months, reaching an astonishing high of $877 on the 2nd of September. The commercial real estate giant is looking to protect the data on which its gains have been built and is taking a rival to court over what it claims are “flagrant and widespread” copyright infringements.

The claims relate to Los Angeles based CREXi who CoStar accuses of creating fake accounts to access its platform over a million times to access 10,000 images that were allegedly uploaded without permission to CREXi’s site.

CREXi is a commercial property marketplace that also has a market intelligence product where, among other things, the company uses AI to detect patterns in property images. CREXi was founded by former Ten-X employee Michael DeGiorgio who was sued by the company on leaving for allegedly stealing trade secrets.

Now Michael DeGiorgio’s company is under fire from CoStar -who bought out Ten-X in a deal worth $190 million back in May- and the omens are not good for CREXi. CoStar famously sued its competitor Xceligent for image copyright infringement back in 2017, with Xceligent going bust soon after.