Thing are heating up in Move Inc.’s ongoing battle with CoStar Group.
On Monday, Move (the parent company of Realtor.com) filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in the suit it filed earlier this month against CoStar, the parent company of Realtor.com rival Homes.com, and James Kaminsky, a former Move employee who now works for Homes.com.
In the complaint, Move alleges that Kaminsky stole trade secrets to help fuel the rapid growth of Homes.com.
In its motion, Move asks the court for a preliminary injunction “restraining and enjoining Defendants CoStar Group, Inc. and James Kaminsky from any further unauthorized access of the following Move-owned files, and from any use or disclosure of Move’s confidential and trade secret information contained in the files.”
The filing notes that the injunction would not stop Kaminsky, who worked on Realtor.com’s News and Insights (N&I) team, from working at CoStar, nor would it prevent CoStar from constructing products that compete with those offered by Move and Realtor.com.
“It seeks only to stop further unlawful use of specific misappropriated files, preserve evidence, and help Move determine what happened to its stolen information,” the motion states.
Move claims that among those files were three “key confidential files” that Move is asking the court to prevent CoStar and Kaminsky from having further access to.
The files at the center of Move’s preliminary injunction include a “Comms + Econ + N&I Project Call” file, an “Editorial Budget,” an “N&I Audience and Revenue for PMDLT” file, and the employment summaries for several individuals at Move.
The plaintiff claims that these files include information such as job titles, descriptions and compensation, and that Kaminsky sent these files to a personal Gmail account on Jan. 12, 2024. According to Move, Kaminsky’s final day of employment at the company was Jan. 12. His contract was terminated on Jan. 10 as part of a wider layoff.
In the filing, Move alleges that Kaminsky sent confidential company files “from his work email to a Gmail account and used his electronic access credentials to authorize that same Gmail account to access confidential Move files so he could surreptitiously access them after leaving Move. Mr. Kaminsky tried to cover his tracks, deleting more than 900 electronic files and clearing his computer browser history. He then for months, until he was caught in June, snuck in to access Move’s confidential files, including dozens of times while working for his new employer – CoStar Group, Inc.”
Move said it discovered that Kaminsky had been accessing these files on June 3, when “a Move employee opened one of the N&I team’s regularly updated core files and noticed an alert that another user, [email protected], was accessing it.”
According to the filing, the employee took a screenshot of his presence in the document. On June 9, Kaminsky again attempted to go back into one of the protected documents, requesting access to the file from his personal Gmail account.
Move claims that it feels the injunction is necessary as CoStar is “taking no accountability for its employee’s conduct” and instead has “rushed to attack Move in the media.“
In an emailed statement, Gene Boxer, the general counsel at CoStar Group, called the motion a “knee jerk filing.”
“Last week we noted that plaintiffs with real concerns about trade secrets file for injunctions when they file complaints, and that Move had not, and we predicted that now that we had called them out, they would file such a motion. That’s exactly what happened,” Boxer wrote.
“And Realtor.com’s motion confirms that they’re using a mid-level employee as a pawn, and that they have zero evidence of any involvement by CoStar. None. As we have said from the beginning, this is a PR stunt, and it is backfiring spectacularly.
“Even more telling is the admission in their motion that Realtor.com knew of Mr. Kaminsky’s purportedly improper conduct at least as early as June 3rd, yet they made no attempt to contact him or CoStar to inquire about such conduct. Instead, they waited a month to take any action. And instead of trying to resolve this directly with the parties involved, they went straight to court and the media to tout their filing.
“CoStar welcomes the chance to litigate this case on the merits, where Realtor.com and Mr. [Damian] Eales [Realtor.com’s CEO] will no longer be able to hide behind press-statements dressed up as legal arguments.”
The suit is the latest development in what has become a long-running feud between Homes.com and Realtor.com. The two have spent the past several months debating who holds the title of second-largest listing portal behind Zillow, with Realtor.com alleging that Homes.com’s claims that it is the No. 2 portal in terms of traffic and impressions are false.
