What's Wrong With Just Competing In The Market? Zillow Sues Trulia For Patent Infringement

from the focus-on-innovation,-not-lawsuits dept

Tue, Sep 25th 2012 7:57pm — Mike Masnick

In the Wired story about Trulia's IPO (which oddly, again, suggests that a massive stock price bump on day one is "good," rather than a sign of a company leaving lots of money on the table), there is a somewhat random aside about how Zillow and Trulia are the two key competitors in the space, and noting that Zillow sued Trulia for patent infringement just recently.

The patent, 7,970,674, is for "Automatically determining a current value for a real estate property, such as a home, that is tailored to input from a human, such as its owner." Got that? Basically, it's for Zillow's "Zestimator" that seeks to take a guess at what any particular house might be worth (an estimate that -- from my view -- often seems completely inaccurate in my own neighborhood, but others may differ). It's a nice feature, no doubt, and it's one that Trulia apparently added to its site... hence the lawsuit.

Even if we assume that Trulia saw what Zillow was doing and flat out copied it -- is that really a problem? Looking specifically at this example (and my experience with Zillow's estimates) this is the kind of thing where it seems like a really good thing to have more competition, driving each company to make their offering even better and more accurate and useful. In other words, just compete in the market and let the best service win. In the past I've been a big fan of Zillow, so I'm disappointed to see them going after competitors with patents, rather than focusing on innovating. It did get me to go check out Trulia again, however, something I hadn't done in years. Though I doubt that was Zillow's intention.

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Filed Under: competition, patents

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Minimum Wage Shill, 25 Sep 2012 @ 8:00pm

"What's Wrong With Just Competing In The Market?"

Because competition sucks. Look at me, I try my best to compete with all the other shills and, no matter how hard I try, they're consistently dumber than me. What am I doing wrong?
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abc gum, 25 Sep 2012 @ 9:14pm

Re:
"What am I doing wrong?"

Obviously, you need something shilltastic to set yourself apart from the other shills - possibly the addition of a shilliment to all of your postings would alleviate the aforementioned difficulty.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Sep 2012 @ 9:17pm

IPO almost 30% undervalued?
That's like forgetting federal AND state taxes. Eh, what's a $350 million+ error on Wall Street.
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Jay (profile), 25 Sep 2012 @ 10:21pm

Re: Re:
And I propose initiating a tax on all other shills! They are CLEARLY dragging you down and ruining your business model with pirated shill programs.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Sep 2012 @ 2:05am

Re: Re: Re:
There should be a tax on stupidity, that would get rid of all the shills.
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Garrett, 26 Sep 2012 @ 2:32am

Thinking this is personal
So I've been recently in the market for a new place and was curious about any alternatives to Zillow. Just 3 days ago I looked for some and found Trulia. They have some really neat offerings and I really think that Zillow is smacking down because Trulia looks to become a fast riser.

Lots of other sites are using estimates (I even found one that asks people to crowdsource the estimate) but Trulia's also doing really cool things like puting in crime overlays, school ratings and a "walking score" which I found pretty cool (even if they did misidentify HEB's corporate office as a grocery store).

So yeah, I think Zillow is correctly identifying Trulia as a threat, and they had this stick, so they used it. Shame...
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Tobias Harms (profile), 26 Sep 2012 @ 3:15am

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
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Decadre (profile), 26 Sep 2012 @ 5:47am

WOW
They managed to patent a combination of a database, math formula and a website.
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RD, 26 Sep 2012 @ 6:06am

DUH!
"Even if we assume that Trulia saw what Zillow was doing and flat out copied it -- is that really a problem? "

Yes! DUH! Because no one would bother to invent real estate if they didnt have protection! Without patents there would be no land to sell!
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Sep 2012 @ 7:44am

Re: WOW
So, we're actually only doing something that's been done for centuries. But we're doing it on a computer! That's patent-worthy, right?
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Ben S (profile), 26 Sep 2012 @ 9:28am

Screw Zillow
I hope Zillow burns. They incorrectly list my mom's quit claimed off the title of my first house as a low-price sale. This led prospective renters to think that we were asking for too much in monthly rent when we put it on the rental market this summer.

Trulia seems to know the difference and does not show the quit claim in the sale history.
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iambinarymind (profile), 26 Sep 2012 @ 10:50am

The problem is...
The problem is companies competing rather that using State force to get their way is something called "freedom" and unfortunately in today's Amerika, "freedom" is tantamount to "terrorism".
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Rachel Rosen, 27 Sep 2012 @ 10:23am

Quit Claim Deed
Hi Ben,
If you email the address to social at zillow dot com, we'd be happy to correct the sale history for you.
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Ben S (profile), 27 Sep 2012 @ 11:03am

Re: Quit Claim Deed
Rachel,

Thanks for at least reaching out, but I'm confused:

If I need to send email to some hidden address, then what is the point of the flag button next to the erroneous entry on my house's Zillow page that is supposedly for submitting corrections?

My wife and I have each used that flag icon to submit corrections several times or the past 1-2 years, and Zillow has ignored it.
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Tobias Harms (profile), 29 Sep 2012 @ 12:16am

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tobias Harms (profile), 29 Sep 2012 @ 10:49am

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tobias Harms (profile), 29 Sep 2012 @ 11:32pm

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tobias Harms (profile), 15 Oct 2012 @ 5:45am

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tobias Harms (profile), 17 Oct 2012 @ 9:00pm

Silly rabbit, of course under valued is good. Didn't you get the memo? What is good, bad, evil and morally right has been redefined to better harmonize with the interest of the stockholders and gamblers. I know you agree, you're not a communistic child molesting pirate terrorist are you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Bob McTague, 7 Nov 2014 @ 4:46pm

Zillow is Now Acquiring Trulia
Good article, but strange that Zillow came out the powerhouse in all of this and now 2 years later they may acquire Trulia.
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