Zillow Snatches up Another Patent

In the latest news pertaining to patents and Zillow’s ever-growing hoard of them, the real estate giant has recently snatched up a patent relating to the way information is displayed and formatted. 

This wouldn’t be much news except that the patent states that if an image of a property has “a primary pane and at least two secondary panes to simultaneously display at least three types of information about the interior of the house in a coordinated manner,” which is a popular way information is displayed across the internet. 

The patent covers how users navigate through this information. The problem is how much Zillow now owns and how hard it is for smaller businesses to break into the market because they could unwittingly infringe upon that patent and then be smacked with a lawsuit by one of the biggest real estate companies in the world. 

Other Zillow patent news includes their pesky vague wording in a patent involving images, its continued battle with IMB over a patent, and its defense of subsidiary, Trulia.