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A federal judge this week ordered Seattle-based Zillow to pay nearly $2 million as the result of a copyright infringement case from an Illinois-based photography company.
In 2015, VHT, Inc., a real estate photography studio sued online real estate service Zillow for copyright infringement, alleging that Zillow’s use of VHT’s photographs exceed the scope of the licenses VHT has with brokers, agents, and listing services. Zillow used the photos taken by VHT on two different parts of its website, a listing platform and a home improvement platform. Zillow tagged photos that were on the listing platform, so that users of the home improvement site could search the data base by various criteria like room type, style and color and come up with the tagged photos on the listing platform.
Case records show that VHT contacted Zillow after seeing its photos on the site and the two companies discussed a possible licensing agreement. In 2014, after Zillow decided to “go in another direction,” VHT sent the company a cease-and-desist letter. Zillow removed the photos in 2016.
In 2017, a federal jury ordered Zillow to pay $8.3 million for copyright infringement, but the court later reversed a portion of that verdict. After post-trial motions, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later sided in part with Zillow and a portion of the case was returned to the lower court, resulting in the $1.9 million dollar judgment ordering Zillow to pay VHT for unauthorized use of its photos.
