CoStar sues Zillow for alleged copyright infringement

Arlington County-based CoStar Group and one of its subsidiaries have sued Zillow, claiming that the real estate website is using nearly 47,000 CoStar-copyrighted images illegally.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by CoStar Group and subsidiary CoStar Realty Information in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. It claims that Zillow Group and subsidiary Zillow Inc. have published CoStar’s real estate photos on Zillow.com and other Zillow sites, as well as distributing CoStar’s copyrighted photos to Zillow’s partnership network of listing sites, including Realtor.com and Redfin.

The outcome, the lawsuit says, is that the images are displayed more than 250,000 times online illegally.

“Zillow’s willful, mass infringement warrants the imposition of permanent injunctive relief as well as a substantial award of damages,” says the complaint, which requests that the court require the “purging and destruction of all CoStar copyrighted photographs” from Zillow’s databases and systems by a third-party source that will monitor Zillow’s future compliance. CoStar also requests an award of its costs, including attorneys’ fees, and exemplary and punitive damages.

Andy Florance, CoStar’s CEO and founder, issued a statement in a news release Wednesday: “Zillow’s theft of tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s copyrighted photographs is nothing short of outrageous. Zillow is profiting from decades of CoStar Group work and the billions of dollars we have invested. Even worse, Zillow is magnifying its infringement on Redfin and Realtor.com. If these other sites do not immediately remove our images, we will have no choice but to sue them as well. We are committed to stopping this systematic infringement and holding the wrongdoers to account.”

The lawsuit provides screenshot images of photos on Zillow’s website that it alleges are CoStar’s images, as well as examples on Redfin and Realtor.com. According to the complaint, “about half of the infringing photographs located on Zillow include CoStar’s watermark. In many instances, Zillow’s listing pages obscure the watermark until a user clicks on and enlarges the actual photograph.”

What’s more, the lawsuit alleges, “Despite having the technical capability to screen out CoStar-watermarked photographs, however, [Zillow] has failed to do so.” The complaint says that Zillow announced in May 2024 it would “dramatically expand its presence in the rental listing market,” and by May 2025, the number of multifamily rental properties had risen 50% to 60,000. Zillow also reportedly had 1.9 million active rental listings at the end of 2024, which had risen to 2.2 million in May, the lawsuit says.

CoStar alleges in the suit that Zillow was able to grow its rental listings by “infringing CoStar’s copyrighted images on a staggering scale,” which allegedly allows Zillow to “enhance its products, gain customers and earn revenue.”

Zillow did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.