Zillow is the target of a massive infringement lawsuit that could force it to pay north of $1 billion in damages
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Owner of Homes.com sues for allegedly infringing more than 46,000 copyrighted photos
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real estate
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July 30, 2025
03:24 PM
Fortune
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Real Estate·ZillowZillow is the target of a massive infringement lawsuit that could force it to pay north of $1 billion in damagesBy Chris MorrisBy Chris MorrisContributing WriterChris MorrisContributing WriterChris Morris is a contributing writer at Fortune, covering everything from general news to the game and theme park industries.SEE FULL BIO Pavlo Gonchar / SOPA Images / LightRocket—Getty ImagesThe owner of s.com is suing Zillow for allegedly infringing more than 46,000 copyrighted photos
The suit seeks “a substantial award of damages,” which could top $1 billion
CoStar’s CEO also threatened Realtor.com and Redfin with similar suits
CoStar Group, the owner of s.com, Apartments.com, and several other real-estate websites, is suing Zillow, alleging the company has displayed tens of thousand of copyrighted photos on its sites
The suit, filed in U.S
District Court in the Southern District of New York, claims Zillow has displayed nearly 47,000 CoStar-copyrighted images on Zillow.com
CoStar is asking for permanent injunctive relief as well as “a substantial award of damages,” which could top $1 billion. “Zillow’s theft of tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s copyrighted photographs is nothing short of outrageous,” Andy Florance, CoStar’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Zillow is fiting from decades of CoStar Group work and the billions of dollars we have invested. … We are committed to stopping this systematic infringement and holding the wrongdoers to account.” Zillow, which was sued earlier this month for antitrust, did not immediately reply to Fortune‘s request for on the suit
CoStar says it has, for decades, employed thousands of fessional photographers to take pictures of residential and commercial real estate, licensing those photos to brokers, perty owners and more
The photos, it says, are registered with the U.S
Copyright Office and watermarked
Zillow, the company alleges, has been using those without paying for them
Rental listings seem to be at the heart of the complaint
Because many photos appear on multiple listings and pages, CoStar says they were displayed more than 250,000 times
The suit also alleges the photos appear on Realtor.com and Redfin, which are owned by separate companies
CoStar accused Zillow of distributing the photos to those sites via a syndication agreement. (Neither of those sites is included in the suit, but Florance said “if these other sites do not immediately remove our images, we will have no choice but to sue them as well.”) “Zillow has unlawfully published and used tens of thousands of CoStar’s copyrighted images to attempt to increase its standing in the online rental listings market,” the suit reads. “While Zillow may try to blame its customers, it is Zillow itself that is using CoStar’s images to build its ducts and earn revenue.” CoStar has prevailed in this battle before
In 2019, it secured a $500 million judgment from the bankruptcy estate of Xceligent, a now-defunct real-estate listing platform, over the use of 38,489 copyrighted photos
The $1 billion estimate is drawn from the larger number of photos and appearances in the allegations
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