Andrea Bramblia at Inman has more on the victory for Move Inc. and the National Association of Realtors, handed out yesterday by a Washington state Superior Court judge who gave the companies a preliminary injunction against Zillow and its chief industry development officer, Errol Samuelson. Samuelson scooted over to Zillow last March without much warning. While this is just a preliminary injunction, I find this graph to be very interesting:
Judge Barbara Linde said Samuelson, formerly Move’s chief strategy officer and realtor.com’s president, had misappropriated Move’s and NAR’s trade secrets by acquiring them using improper means and by copying information without authorization.
She further concluded that Samuelson’s conduct both before and after his resignation from Move threatens misappropriation of Move’s and NAR’s trade secret information and could result in “irreparable harm” to them if disclosed.
Samuelson was the Chief Strategy Officer of Move.com. When companies spend time, manpower and capital to develop trade secrets and contacts over many years, that is generally considered their property and employees cannot help themselves to it when they walk out the door. Surely he knew that? Andrea says the specific trade secret info is redacted from the court filings.
From now until the case is over, the injunction prohibits Samuelson from directly or indirectly using, disclosing, or relying on Move and NAR’s confidential or trade secret information and prohibits Zillow from appropriating the information from Samuelson or using any information previously obtained.
There are specific items he is not allowed to do for several months.
Samuelson also cannot participate in much of anything having to do with listing feeds or listing syndicator ListHub until the case has concluded. This includes:
- efforts to acquire or develop a syndicator of real estate data;
- efforts to interrupt the flow back to ListHub of leads generated by listings syndicated by ListHub and efforts to obtain access to those leads;
- discussions or efforts related to the way Zillow supplies data to ListHub or the scope of that data;
- discussions of strategy or public messaging regarding ListHub
- efforts to obtain direct feeds of listing data from multiple listing services, real estate brokers, franchisors, or associations;
- efforts to influence, interrupt or prevent the agreements, relationships, or data feeds between those industry organizations and ListHub;
- efforts to encourage data feeds from those industry organizations to parties other than ListHub; and,
- efforts to circumvent ListHub.
This lawsuit could tie Samuelson’s hands for years.
For the next 12 months, Samuelson cannot engage in discussions or efforts pertaining to top-level domains.
For the next nine months, he can’t participate in efforts to obtain, use, or display information about listings for rental, international, or commercial real estate properties; provide information on homeownership and maintenance on Zillow’s websites; or discuss NAR’s plans or strategies surrounding realtor.com’s integration of NAR’s public advocacy initiatives.
From the sound of what he cannot do for the next year, it looks like Samuelson is going to have to have an attorney glued to his flank and scrutinizing every move. He cannot take part in
- efforts to sell leads or to develop or market products that gather and sell leads to real estate agents, brokers, or franchisors;
- developing products that create websites for real estate agents;
- developing contact relationship management tools;
- purchasing or obtaining leads from third parties;
- discussing Move’s business-to-business lines with Zillow or members of the real estate industry;
- discussing the distribution or sale of leads to real estate agents, brokers, or franchisors;
- strategic planning regarding advertising displays on Zillow’s website;
- discussion of advertising strategy or allocation of Zillow’s advertising spend; and,
- discussions of Move’s budget, advertising spend, or industry relations strategy
This is pretty meaningless to the real estate consumer, unless it affects the prowess of Zillow’s almost hormone-induced prowl to get market share. Again, I cannot blame them. Zillow has something that works. Consumers like Zillow and turn to it religiously, because the site is fun, well-written and user friendly. I’d say informative, but that’s Zillow’s biggest problem: inaccurate data. Looks like that’s something Samuelson was really working on — 16,000 subscriber strong MLSListings Inc. just contracted to feed listings in northern California directly to Zillow.
Zillow is also powering searches for almost every on line media company. I hope the folks at Move and Realtor.com use the time this injuction has bought them wisely, very wisely.
Do you think this injunction will slow down Zillow’s voracious appetite? Do you find Zillow an effective way to market listings?
