In a court ruling October 28, California District Judge George H. Wu partially granted CoStar Group’s motion to dismiss claims in the lawsuit filed by Move, Inc., the parent company of rival Realtor.com®, throwing out (at least for now) two accusations related to computer crimes.
Wu granted Move “leave to amend,” setting a deadline of three weeks for the company to seek to revive their claims with new arguments or evidence.
The decision follows on the heels of a similar result in September, as the case continues onward. The case concerns Move’s allegations that former Move employee James Kaminsky, when working for CoStar Group, stole proprietary information helping CoStar’s Homes.com expand its burgeoning business.
Wu noted that Move, which claimed that Kaminsky’s ill-gotten gains allegedly caused more than $5,000 in damages, the threshold for a relevant statute, failed to provide sufficient facts to uphold those computer crime claims against Kaminsky.
“The Court is not aware of any other allegation elsewhere in the (latest filing) that provides any more detail, or facts, in support of a ‘damage or loss’ allegation tied to Plaintiffs’…claims,” he wrote.
“But those paragraphs merely reveal, at most, that Plaintiffs ‘discovered’ certain things and ‘cut off’ access, providing no facts concerning the manner of that discovery/cutting off, or what resources went into it. They certainly do not include allegations of ‘expending significant resources responding to and assessing Mr. Kaminsky’s breach,’ an assertion they make in their Opposition brief,” he said.
CoStar General Counsel Gene Boxer trumpeted the result in an email to RISMedia.
“CoStar is grateful that the Court granted its motion to dismiss Move’s statutory trade secrets claims,” he wrote. “As we have said all along, Move’s case is a sham. Nothing more than a transparent attempt by the operator of the flailing Realtor.com to lash out at Homes.com, which has far surpassed Move’s website in the marketplace.
“Move should drop its nonsensical case, focus on fixing its broken business model, and spend its legal fees on defending the class action lawsuit that accuses Realtor.com of selling fake leads to brokers,” Boxer continued.
A Realtor.com spokesperson emailed this statement regarding the new development:
“We are pleased that the judge rejected all but one of CoStar’s arguments. We plan to proceed with all six of our claims after making minor adjustments, per the judge’s instructions. We look forward to moving ahead with our claims in the discovery process and having our day in court.”
