CoStar, a leading company providing data on commercial real estate, is facing accusations in an antitrust lawsuit that it has formed a monopoly in the commercial space. Xceligent, one of CoStar’s competitors, filed the suit on Wednesday, saying it wants to prevent CoStar from “blocking the commercial real estate industry’s ability to freely share” information with competitors. Industry insiders say the lawsuit has the potential to determine the future of how commercial property information is shared.
Xceligent is accusing CoStar of violating restrictions the Federal Trade Commission had enacted against the firm in 2012 to prevent it from becoming a monopoly. However, CoStar CEO Andrew Florance claims Xceligent is attempting to steal and resell his company’s proprietary images and data.
Xceligent alleges CoStar “is contaminating broker listings and property data with fake data points,” falsifying data in private databases and on public listings that brokers post on LoopNet without notifying the broker or property owner about the change. Xceligent also accuses CoStar of preventing brokers and property owners from having exclusive rights to their information and sharing that information with CoStar competitors.
Xceligent says it is owed damages related to antitrust activities and defamation and is requesting the federal government to cease CoStar’s “decades-long monopoly” of commercial real estate information.
“We feel it’s our duty to protect the brokers’ rights to freely share their information and meet their fiduciary responsibilities to their clients,” says Xceligent CEO Doug Curry. “We gladly take up this fight, and we will not rest until the industry has clear safeguards against an obvious abuse of power by CoStar.”
CoStar officials have yet to respond to the lawsuit.
Source: “Xceligent Files Antitrust Suit Against CoStar, Alleges Years of Anticompetitive Behavior,” Forbes.com (June 28, 2017)
