CoStar drops lawsuit against CompStak users

Real estate firm claims victory after judge compels CompStak to reveal users' identities

From left: CoStar CEO Andrew Florance and CompStak CEO Michael Mandel
From left: CoStar CEO Andrew Florance and CompStak CEO Michael Mandel

CoStar Group has dropped its anti-piracy lawsuit against a number of anonymous CompStak users.

The suit alleged the CompStak users posted CoStar’s proprietary commercial real estate data to the rival website in violation of CoStar’s terms of service. The judge’s denial of CompStak’s motion to block a request to reveal the identities of four users named in the suit amounted to a victory, CoStar told the Washington Business Journal

“We basically got what we wanted,” CoStar spokesman Mark Klionsky told the publication. “We reached out to the John Does, we had what I would consider successful discussions with them, and they’ve agreed not to put our intellectual property into third-party systems.”

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In April,  U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered CompStak to turn over the names of those four John Does to CoStar.

CompStak CEO Michael Mandel told the Business Journal that CoStar’s sole purpose in bringing suit was to drag his company’s name through the mud, saying the lawsuit had no merit. [Washington Business Journal]Tom DiChristopher