Feb. 9 Securities and Exchange Commission filing
“In December 2016, the Court granted a motion for partial summary judgment that dismissed VHT’s claims with respect to the Company’s listing site. A federal jury trial began on January 23, 2017, and on February 9, 2017, the jury returned a verdict finding that the Company had infringed VHT’s copyrights in images displayed or saved to the Digs site. The jury awarded VHT $79,875 in actual damages and $8.24 million in statutory damages.”
$8.24M to VHT. Ouch. They don’t have much luck with lawsuits do they?
But they aren’t going down without a fight.
Zillow Group plans to appeal $8M photo copyright verdict
““We have persistently maintained our belief that this suit was without merit,” Zillow Group spokeswoman Amanda Woolley said in a statement to Inman. “While we are pleased that the majority of original claims were dismissed in this case, we regret that the jury did not find for us completely on those that remained, and will vigorously pursue all options to overturn their verdict.”
Hmm, what does that mean for the rest of the world? Could that lead to a standard where images are only to be used on active listings, or is it just buyer beware and agents should make sure that they have proper rights to images from their paid photographers.
@Thomas I think this mostly had to do with images on Zillow Digs. Not sure what the difference of usage rights on that site vs. Zillow.com might be.