photo credit: bloomsberries

An old lawsuit over real estate search patents has resurfaced again.

Florida inventor Mark Tornetta and Real Estate Alliance LTD (REAL), who owns Tornetta’s patents (Nos. 4,480,576 and 5,032,989), have announced today they have moved in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to sue the industry’s largest trade association and several national brokerages, home builders and online real estate players.

Named in the suit were:

• The National Association of Realtors (NAR), with approximately 1.3 million real estate broker and agent members nationwide;
• Nationwide real estate brokerage firms, including RE/MAX and Keller Williams Realty;
• Home builders, such as Pulte Homes and Ryland Group;
• The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB);
• Enterprise computer software providers to the real estate industry, including Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, First American Corporation, and others;
• MOVE, Inc., the company that operates flagship real estate websites such as Realtor.com, MOVE.com, HomeBuilder.com, RentNet.com, and SeniorHousingNet.com; and
• More than 25 other defendants representing nationwide classes of claimed infringers:  real estate brokers, agents, multiple listing services, new home builders, and rental property owners/managers.

The patents, which were applied for in 1986, were granted by the U.S. Government in 1989 and 1991 and cover online search methods. From their press release:

[The patents] cover user-friendly mapping methods “for locating available real estate properties for sale, lease or rental using a database of available properties at a central location and remote stations which use a graphic interface.”  The patents also cover certain online usage involving a “drilldown” feature, under which specific areas can be displayed in greater detail.

The suit is seeking compensatory as well as 3x damages.

This time around, REAL has retained the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP to lead the litigation. Proskauer has a well known track record of successfully litigating cases around intellectual property – most recently leading class action efforts against YouTube and Google (YouTubeClassAction.com).

Back story. In 1998, the same group sued Microsoft over their HomeAdvisor site and in 2005 they sued a Pennsylvania real estate agent over their listings search method.

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by Kevin Steele

Watch out! Catfight breaking out!

Earlier this year, ActiveRain, the popular social networking site for Realtors, was about to be acquired by Move.com, the owners of Realtor.com. Right at the eleventh hour however, Move.com pulled out of the deal.

All of this has come out in a lawsuit that is detailed in today’s Inman News.

Terms of the original deal are unclear, but ActiveRain is now seeking $33 million in damages and alleges Move.com stole “confidential information” that it is using it to create and maintain the new Realtor.com blog network.

This is a big deal for Move if they lose. They will probably come out of it with a little egg on their face and the damages are likely more than they would have had to pay for ActiveRain in the first place.

ActiveRain is not without some risk with this news getting out either. The ActiveRain community may not be so happy to hear the owners were that close to selling out. I wonder how the community would have reacted when it woke up and found out it had just been acquired by Move.

Ultimately, this lawsuit raises an important question you should be asking yourself. Just who owns your content online?

Thousands of real estate professionals have moved their conversations online over the last year as blogging has become more and more popular and has become an important part of a Realtor’s marketing arsenal.

Don’t be fooled, your content is very valuable. Platforms like ActiveRain, Trulia Voices, Zillow Q&A all seek to tap this knowledge base and build massive databases which they hope to monetize. ActiveRain’s near-acquisition shows just how much your words can be worth.

On the flip side, and mostly because of the communities that have developed around these sites, people start to feel very personally attached to their blogs, their profiles, whatever. They start to feel like it’s their own little corner of the Web.

But remember – at the end of the day – on any of those sites, your words aren’t yours.

What you gain in terms of Google Juice and traffic, you lose in control. The bottom line is your content rests in someone else’s hands.

Now I’m not suggesting you don’t participate in these sites. In fact, quite the opposite. The trade off could very well be worth it. I’m simply suggesting you think about the long term implications.

A site may have all the best intentions in the world and spell out truly honorable Terms & Conditions. But what happens when they fold, merge or are acquired by a third party? You may not like where those words end up. This holds true no matter what kind of information you’re putting online.

All of this reminds me of wise words I once heard from a buddy in college – Don’t go to bed with someone you don’t really know, you may not like who you wake up with.

Update: Active Rain has posted copies of the original filing and Move’s response on their web site. It looks like Move offered AR $30 million cash and extended employment offers to 3 of AR’s executives, which they, in principle, accepted. Move apparently killed the deal once it had gotten its hands on the ActiveRain member list and contact information. Ugh – this is nasty all around. Also I’m not sure I like that my information (I have an AR account) was shared without my consent – where is AR’s privacy policy?

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