Antitrust Claim Revived Against CoStar in its Copyright Suit (1)

Antitrust counterclaims brought against digital real estate information company CoStar Group Inc. in response to its copyright lawsuit were too easily dismissed, the Ninth Circuit said Monday.

Commercial Real Estate Exchange Inc., known as CREXi, plausibly alleged CoStar entered de facto exclusive deals and imposed technological barriers that constituted anticompetitive conduct, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in a precedential decision.

The opinion by Circuit Judge Anthony D. Johnstone restores CREXi’s leverage in the high-stakes lawsuit in which CoStar accused it of removing watermarks and infringing more than 50,000 real estate photos. A district judge ...